rsion in
hot water, or by exposure to the sun, steam, or the heat of an
oven--much of the variety of appearance in the commercial article being
caused by the mode of treatment. The dried insect has the form of
irregular, fluted and concave grains, of which about 70,000 go to a
pound. Cochineal has a musty and bitterish taste. There are two
principal varieties--_silver cochineal_, which has a greyish-red colour,
and the furrows of the body covered with a white bloom or fine down; and
_black cochineal_, which is of a dark reddish brown, and destitute of
bloom. _Granilla_ is an inferior kind, gathered from uncultivated
plants. The best crop is the first of the season, which consists of the
unimpregnated females; the later crops contain an admixture of young
insects and skins, which contain proportionally little colouring matter.

The black variety of cochineal is sometimes sold for silver cochineal by
shaking it with powdered talc or heavy-spar; but these adulterations can
be readily detected by means of a lens. The duty in the United Kingdom
on imported cochineal was repealed in 1845.

Cochineal owes its tinctorial power to the presence of a substance
termed cochinealin or carminic acid, C17H18O10, which may be prepared
from the aqueous decoction of cochineal. Cochineal also contains a fat
and wax; cochineal wax or coccerin, C30H60(C31H61O3)2, may be extracted
by benzene, the fat is a glyceryl myristate C3H5(C14H27O2)3.

COCHLAEUS, JOHANN (1479-1552), German humanist and controversialist,
whose family name was Dobneck, was born of poor parents in 1479 at
Wendelstein (near Nuremberg), whence his friends gave him the punning
surname Cochlaeus (spiral), for which he occasionally substituted
Wendelstinus. Having received some education at Nuremberg from the
humanist Heinrich Grieninger, he entered (1504) the university of
Cologne. In 1507 he graduated, and published under the name of
Wendelstein his first piece, _In musicam exhortatorium_. He left Cologne
(May 1510) to become schoolmaster at Nuremberg, where he brought out
several school manuals. In 1515 he was at Bologna, hearing (with
disgust) Eck's famous disputation against usury, and associating with
Ulrich von Hutten and humanists. He took his doctor's degree at Ferrara
(1517), and spent some time in Rome, where he was ordained priest. In
1520 he became dean of the Liebfrauenkirche at Frankfort, where he first
entered the lists as a controversialist against the