The new North-west. [volume] (Deer Lodge, Mont.) 1869-1897, 1886-04-30
CACTI AND COCHINEAL.
HOW THE INSECTS ARE REARED AND
CULTIVATED IN TENERlFFE.

Habitation and Feeding Ground of the
Insect from Whose Body LIS Extracted
the Well Known Crimson Dye-Care of
the Young-Ready for Market.
The general effect of the landscape is
that of rocky sterility, and even cultivation
as at present conducted seems to add to
the barren appearance, for almost the sole
crop worked in the neighborhood of the
city is the cactus-a plant which, with its
prickly spires and it's fat, bulbous, greasy,
bulging lobes, is to me the very culmina-
ton of ugly worthlessness. Itpresents the
appearance of dwarfshness and de-
formity, and disease and distortion. But
) out of disease springeth health, and from
even this monstrosity wealth has come to
the eultivator, for this plant is the habita-
ton and feeding ground of the cochineal.
TAKING CARE OF THE CoCHINEAL.
This is the insect from whose body is ex-
tracted the rich crimson dye used in color
ing cloths. The full-grown insect is about
the size and shape of a well fed and care
fully reared bed-bug 1t is wonderfully
prolific. The mother is placed on the
thereon with profusion that passes COM
fed even Napoleon, whose idea of the
noblest woman was the one who produced
the most men children for soldiers The
Matching process is brief, and the young
cochineals swarm out upon the leaf as the
barbarians descended upon Rome
They have no wings and their legs are
hardly worth speaking of, as the entire
locomotion of their lives is comprised
within the area of few square inches.
That they may not be washed off by the
rain or shaken off by the wind, each leaf
with its swarming tenants is carefully
wrapped in cotton rag which is pinned
together with thorns. Indeed, the cactus
plants in the season are rather better and
more decently clad than the children.
They are arranged in hills about two
feet apart like corn, and when they are
dressed in their white shirts, each leaf by
itself, the field presents a singular appear
ance. This is still rendered more striking
from the fact that the bugs exude from
their skins kind of fine white powder,
and they themselves and their enveloping
rags and the green cactus, and the people
who work among them, who, by the way,
are mostly women, seem as If thoroughly
busted with -four.
BAGGED AND READY FOR MARKET.
When the insects have reached maturity
they are carefully brushed from the plants
into pans and placed in an oven where a
gentle roasting does the business for them,
and then having been picked over and
thus classed into the different grades ac-
cording to their respective buggy minds,
they are bagged and ready for market.
When SO prepared about 70,000 of them go
to the pound. During the last year 1900
bags of $50 pounds each were shipped from
Santa Cruz. If you are to know how many
distinct individuals this amounts to- here
it is-420 900, 600, 900. There is bugs for you'll
The present selling price is about twenty
four cents! How much is that per cochi-
neal? Cipher it yourself. My arithmetic
is but finite. And yet possibly they have
among themselves kingdoms and provinci-
palitles bounded by cactus leaf with DIS
tinctions of buggy rank and jealousies of
buggy peace, with emulations and strug-
giles and loves and hates and pleasures and
disappointments-a all ends by being
baked in an oven and sold 10000 for
twenty-four cents I dare say there is an
excellent and improving moral to be
drawn somehow from all this. ButI was
never good at extracting morals.
The price of cechineal was formerly
much higher than now, being from ninety
cents to $1.20 per pound, and then the
business was exceedingly proftable; so
much so that all Teneriffe farmers COM
menced to cultivate it, even roofing up
their grape vines and big trees to plant the
, cactus. Bat now chemists have discov-
cred aniline dyes that are equally good and
much cheaper, and in consequence the
smutty little bug has to go begging, as it
were The industry for this island is a
lost one. 1t does not pay. Of course the
Teneriffe Spaniard devoted1y believes
chemistry to be one of the devilish arts and
invokes upon all retorts and crucibles
solemn anathema aranatha.-Teneriffe
Cor Detroit Free Press.