Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/538

530 nopals and tunas. The insect is so small that it is calculated that it takes above seventy thousand in the dried state to make a pound. It always remains attached to the spot at which it was hatched, and its body grows rapidly as it absorbs the juice of the cactus, until legs, antennæ, and proboscis can hardly be distinguished by the naked eye. The female, which alone produces the dye, is detached from the leaf just prior to the escape of the young from the egg, when she contains the greatest amount of coloring matter, and killed by being plunged into boiling water, or placed with heaps of others in hot ovens.

Since the discovery of aniline dyes cochineal has steadily fallen away in value, until now it hardly pays even the Indian to raise it. It is now worth but ten dollars the arroba, but formerly brought one hundred dollars, when immense fortunes resulted from its cultivation. The Indians affirm that Oaxaca was the original habitat of the cochineal, whence it was taken to Guatemala and the Canaries.