The sowing of cochineal, as it is called, is performed at day-break, the insects being conveyed from the old plants and attached to the new. For this purpose they are placed in little nests made by the natives, and attached with thorns to the leaves of the nopal. Here they quickly multiply to an astonishing extent. A nopalerie is in perfection six years, after which the insects are taken away and the plants cut down. The cochineal harvest takes place every year as soon as the young insects begin to run about. Assembling his friends, old and young, the owner of the cochineal ground enters it at break of day with a crowd of men, women, and children, provided with knives six inches long and two wide, and also with dishes and with baskets. The blade of the knife is rounded at the top, so as to injure neither the insect nor the plant; this is passed gently between the skin of the nopal and the clusters of cochineals with which it is covered, causing the latter to fall into the dish or basket, which the left hand holds ready to receive them. A child of ten years old may thus gather ten pounds of insects in a day, which being killed and dried will yield about three pounds and a half of cochineal. The best method of killing the insects is by pouring boiling water on them, and allowing it to remain one, two, or three minutes. The water is preserved, as it necessarily has some of the colouring matter of the insects; the latter are spread out to dry in the sun and wind, being turned occasionally by hand. Ten persons, it is said, can thus prepare two hundred pounds of cochineal in two days. Such is the history given by de Menonville himself, in his volumes entitled ‘_Voyage à Guaxaca_.’ Baron Humboldt, describing the management of cochineals in this and in other parts of South America, gives some additional particulars. He ascertained that in a colder climate, the colour of the cochineal is equally fine, but the harvests are more uncertain. Plains or valleys are generally more favourable to the rapid increase of the cochineals than elevated ground, but such places also abound in insect enemies, and in lizards, rats, and birds, which devour the crop. Great care is required in clearing all the joints of the nopals: for this purpose Indian women use a squirrel’s or a stag’s tail, and will sit for hours crouched near a single plant. Notwithstanding the high price of cochineal, it is very doubtful whether the trade would answer in any country where labour is more valuable. In some parts of Guaxaca (called by Humboldt Oaxaca), they obtain three harvests of cochineal in the year, the first being the least lucrative, because the bodies of the insects yield very little colouring matter when they die naturally, and this is the case at the first harvest, when they have just brought forth their young. Many of the negro proprietors of nopaleries, especially those in the neighbourhood of Oaxaca, have a very ancient and singular