[1] See also INDO-CHINA, FRENCH; and ANNAM.
COCHINEAL, a natural dye-stuff used for the production of scarlet,
crimson, orange and other tints, and for the preparation of lake and
carmine. It consists of the females of _Coccus cacti_, an insect of the
family _Coccidae_ of the order _Hemiptera_, which feeds upon various
species of the _Cactaceae_, more especially the nopal plant, _Opuntia
coccinellifera_, a native of Mexico and Peru. The dye was introduced
into Europe from Mexico, where it had been in use long before the
entrance of the Spaniards in the year 1518, and where it formed one of
the staple tributes to the crown for certain districts. In 1523 Cortes
received instructions from the Spanish court to procure it in as large
quantities as possible. It appears not to have been known in Italy so
late as the year 1548, though the art of dyeing then flourished there.
Cornelius van Drebbel, at Alkmaar, first employed cochineal for the
production of scarlet in 1650. Until about 1725 the belief was very
prevalent that cochineal was the seed of a plant, but Dr Martin Lister
in 1672 conjectured it to be a kind of kermes, and in 1703 Antony van
Leeuwenhoek ascertained its true nature by aid of the microscope. Since
its introduction cochineal has supplanted kermes (_Coccus ilicis_) over
the greater part of Europe.
The male of the cochineal insect is half the size of the female, and,
unlike it, is devoid of nutritive apparatus; it has long white wings,
and a body of a deep red colour, terminated by two diverging setae. The
female is apterous, and has a dark-brown plano-convex body; it is found
in the proportion of 150 to 200 to one of the male insect. The dead body
of the mother insect serves as a protection for the eggs until they are
hatched. Cochineal is now furnished not only by Mexico and Peru, but
also by Algiers and southern Spain. It is collected thrice in the seven
months of the season. The insects are carefully brushed from the
branches of the cactus into bags, and are then killed by immersion 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 party of Luther,
developing that bitter hatred to the Reformation which animated his
forceful but shallow ascription of the movement to the meanest motives,
due to a quarrel between the Dominicans and Augustinians. Luther would
not meet him in discussion at Mainz in 1521. He was present at the diets
of Worms, Regensburg, Spires and Augsburg. The peasants' war drove him
from Frankfort; he obtained (1526) a canonry at Mainz; in 1529 he became
secretary to Duke George of Saxony, at Dresden and Meissen. The death of
his patron (1539) compelled him to take flight. He became canon
(September 1539) at Breslau, where he died on the 10th of January 1552.
He was a prolific writer, largely of overgrown pamphlets, harsh and
furious. His more serious efforts retain no permanent value. With
humanist convictions, he had little of the humanist spirit. We owe to
him one of the few contemporary notices of the young Servetus.
See C. Otto, _Johannes Cochlaeus, der Humanist_ (1874); Haas, in I.
Goschler's _Dict. encydoped. de la theol. cath._ (1858); Brecher, in
_Allgemeine deutsche Biographie_ (1876); T. Kolde, in A. Hauck's
_Realencyklopadie fur prot. Theol. u. Kirche_ (1898). (A. Go.*)
COCK, EDWARD (1805-1802), British surgeon, was born in 1805. He was a
nephew of Sir Astley Cooper, and through him became at an early age a
member of the staff of the Borough hospital in London, where he worked
in the dissecting room for thirteen years. Afterwards he became in 1838
assistant surgeon at Guy's, where from 1849 to 1871 he was surgeon, and
from 1871 to 1892 consulting surgeon. He rose to be president of the
College of Surgeons in 1869. He was an excellent anatomist, a bold
operator, and a clear and incisive writer, and though in lecturing he
was afflicted with a stutter, he frequently utilized it with humorous
effect and emphasis. From 1843 to 1849 he was editor of _Guy's Hospital
Reports_, which contain many of his papers, particularly on stricture of
the urethra, puncture of the bladder, injuries to the head, and hernia.
He was the first English surgeon to perform pharyngotomy with success,
and also one of the first to succeed in trephining for middle meningeal
haemorrhage; but the operation by which his name is known is that of
opening the urethra through the perinaeum (see _Guy's Hospital Reports_,
1866). He died at Kingston in 1892.
COCKADE (Fr. _cocarde_, in 16th century _coquarde_, from _coq_, in
allusion probably to the cock's comb), a knot of ribbons or a rosette
worn as a badge, particularly now as part of the livery of servants. The
cockade was at first the button and loop or clasp which "cocked" up the
side of an ordinary slouch hat. The word first appears in this sense in
Rabelais in the phrase "_bonnet a la coquarde_," which is explained by
Cotgrave (1611) as a "Spanish cap or fashion of bonnet used by
substantial men of yore ... worne proudly or peartly on th' one side."
The bunch of ribbons as a party badge developed from this entirely
utilitarian button and loop. The Stuarts' badge was a white rose, and
the resulting white cockade figured in Jacobite songs after the downfall
of the dynasty. William III.'s cockade was of yellow, and the House of
Hanover introduced theirs of black, which in its present spiked or
circular form of leather is worn in England to-day by the royal coachmen
and grooms, and the servants of all officials or members of the
services. At the battle of Sheriffmuir in the reign of George I. the
English soldiers wore a black rosette in their hats, and in a
contemporary song are called "the red-coat lads wi' black cockades." At
the outbreak of the French Revolution of 1789, cockades of green ribbon
were adopted. These afterwards gave place to the tricolour cockade,
which is said to have been a mixture of the traditional colours of Paris
(red and blue) with the white of the Bourbons, the early Revolutionists
being still Royalists. The French army wore the tricolour cockade until
the Restoration. To-day each foreign nation has its special coloured
cockade. Thus the Austrian is black and yellow, the Bavarian light blue
and white, the Belgian black, yellow and red, French the tricolour,
Prussian black and white, Russian green and white, and so on, following
usually the national colours. Originally the wearing of a cockade, as
soon as it had developed into a badge, was restricted to soldiers, as
"to mount a cockade" was "to become a soldier." There is still a trace
of the cockade as a badge in certain military headgears in England and
elsewhere. Otherwise it has become entirely the mark of domestic
service. The military cocked hat, the lineal descendant of the _bonnet a
la coquarde_, became the fashion in France during the reign of Louis XV.
See _Genealogical Magazine_, vols. i.-iii. (London, 1897-1899);
Racinet, _La Costume historique_ (6 vols., Paris, 1888).