ous substances, and in the Cochineal districts the Indian women are seen bending over them for hours together, and brushing them lightly with a squirrel's tail.
In a good year, one pound of Semilla, deposited upon the plant in October, will yield, in December, twelve pounds of Cochineal, leaving a sufficient quantity of seed behind to give a second crop in May.
The plantations of the Cochineal Cactus are confined to the district of La Mīstĕcā, in the State of Ŏăxācă. Some of these Haciendas de Nŏpālĕs contain from fifty, to sixty, thousand plants, arranged in lines, like the Aloes in the Maguey plantations which I have already described, and cut down to a certain height, in order to enable the Nopaleros to clean them more easily.
In the year 1758, a government registry office was established at Ŏăxācă, in consequence of the complaints of some English merchants, who had received cargoes of adulterated Cochineal, in which all the Cochineal produced in the province was ordered to be examined and registered. By the official returns which I possess, it appears that the value of the Cochineal entered upon the books of this office up to 1815, was 91,308,907 dollars, which, upon fifty-seven years, gives an average of 1,601,910 dollars per annum, without making any allowance for contraband, which has always been carried on to the amount of nearly half a million more. The number
