Sometimes it is woolly and flocculent, sometimes smooth like parchment, and its shape depends in a large measure upon the habits of the female towards her offspring.
The word "flocculent" is used of many substances which have a fleecy or "flock"-like appearance, such as a precipitate of ferric hydrate.
Ferrous sulphate and sodium carbonate in the cold give a flocculent precipitate, at first white but rapidly turning green owing to oxidation.
The acid not only takes up water, but it acts on the suspended impurities, carbonizing them to some extent, and thus causing them to coagulate and fall down in the form of a flocculent mass, which carries with it mechanically other impurities which have not been acted upon.
Coccus pinicorticis causes the growth of patches of white flocculent and downy matter on the smooth bark of young trees of the white pine in America.