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A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire.(Book Review)
Publication: Natural History Publication Date: 01-SEP-05 Author: Marschall, Laurence A.
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COPYRIGHT 2005 Natural History Magazine, Inc.
A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire by Amy Butler Greenfield HarperCollins, 2005; $26.95
In the highlands of southern Mexico, near the city of Oaxaca, lives an insect no bigger than a lentil, known to modern biologists as Dactylopius coccus, or, more commonly, the cochineal. The female, which is the more common form of the bug (a female's life span is twice as long as a male's), is a wingless parasite whose ideal of domesticity is to stick her proboscis deep into the flaplike leaf of...
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