A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins, Volume I (of 2)

KERMES. COCHINEAL

Though a variety of information respecting the history of cochineal and kermes may be found scattered in the works of different authors, I shall venture to lay before the public what I have gathered on the subject; as I flatter myself with the hope of being able to rectify some errors of my predecessors, as well as to supply deficiencies which they have left; and as it will undoubtedly be agreeable to many readers to see collected in one point of view whatever is most important, with the addition of a few explanatory observations and notes.

Cochineal and kermes, as they appear in commerce, are small grains, shaped almost like those small dried grapes without stones, which are called currants. They are sometimes of a deep and sometimes of a fainter reddish-brown, or violet-brown colour, are often covered with a gray dust or mouldiness[1152 - [The powder spread out by the female insect just before laying the eggs.]], appear full of wrinkles, as succulent bodies generally do when dried, and for the most part are a little more raised on the one side than on the other. When these grains are chewed, they have a somewhat bitterish and astringent taste, and communicate to the spittle a brownish-red colour. They are employed in medicine, but their principal use is in dyeing.

It is now well-known that they belong to that genus of insects called Coccus, and that they are principally the dried impregnated females. Numerous species of these insects have been described by entomologists[1153 - [Stephens in his Catalogue of British Insects enumerates no less than thirty species as inhabitants of these islands.]], who have most frequently named them from the plants on which they occur; for the present object, however, it will be sufficient to take notice only of three kinds.

The first is the real American cochineal, or that which at present is most used, but which at the same time is the dearest. By Linnæus it is called Coccus Cacti. The second kind is found chiefly on a species of oak, the Quercus Ilex, in the Levant, Spain, France, and other southern countries, and is therefore called Coccus Ilicis, Coccus arborum, and often also kermes. The third comprehends that saleable cochineal found on the roots of several perennial plants, which is known commonly under the appellation of Polish or German cochineal; though it is not certain whether those insects produced upon the perennial knawel (Scleranthus), bears-breech (Uva-ursi) and other plants, be the same species. They are often distinguished also by the name of Coccus radicum.

That the second species has been mentioned by the ancient Hebrew, Greek, Latin and Arabian writers cannot be denied; and those who know that our information respecting the nature of this commodity, which is perhaps even yet imperfect, has been in modern times procured after much labour and research, will not be surprised to find their accounts mingled with many falsehoods and contradictions. The ancients must have been under more doubt and in greater ignorance on this subject, the less they were acquainted with the propagation of these insects; but we should be too precipitate were we to reject entirely everything they have said that may deviate from the truth; and I think it would be no difficult task to produce writers of the seventeenth and of the eighteenth century, whose information on this point is as dubious and incorrect as that to be found in the writings of the ancients.

All the ancient Greek[1154 - By Dioscorides they are called κόκκος βαφική. Dioscorides, iv. 48, p. 260. Respecting the tree, Pausanias, lib. x. p. 890, seems to raise some difficulty, as he compares it to the σχῖνος, lentiscus, or, as others read the word, σχοῖνος. But it has been remarked long ago, that the reading ought to be πρῖνος, ilex; and this alteration is supported by some manuscripts.] and Latin writers agree that kermes, called by the latter coccum, perhaps also coccus, and often granum, were found upon a low shrubby tree, with prickly leaves, which produced acorns, and belonged to the genus of the oak; and there is no reason to doubt that they mean Coccus Ilicis, and that low evergreen oak, with the prickly leaves of the holly (aquifolium), which is called at present in botany Quercus Ilex[1155 - [Kirby and Spence and Stephens state that the Coccus Ilicis is found upon the Quercus coccifera. Moreover Beckmann’s description of the “low evergreen oak” does not apply to Q. Ilex, but does to coccifera; Ilex grows sixty feet high, coccifera only ten; in the other respects detailed by him they agree.]]. This assertion appears more entitled to credit, as the ancients assign for the native country of this tree places where it is still indigenous and produces kermes.

According to the account of Dioscorides, kermes were collected in Galatia, Armenia, Asia, Cilicia and Spain. Most commentators suppose that there must be here some error, as that author first mentions Galatia and Armenia, and then Asia in general. Some, therefore, understand by the latter, the city of Asia in Lydia; others have altered or rejected the word altogether; and Serapion, in his Arabic translation, seems to have read Syria. Professor Tychsen, however, assured me that Asia proconsularis is here meant, to which Cilicia did not belong; and in this particular sense the word is often used by writers contemporary with Dioscorides. Of this difficulty Salmasius takes no notice.

We are informed by Pliny[1156 - Plin. Hist. Nat. lib. ix. cap. 41; lib. xvi. cap. 8; lib. xxii. cap. 2; lib. xxiv. cap. 4.] that kermes were procured from Asia and Africa; from Attica, Galatia, Cilicia, and also from Lusitania and Sardinia; but those produced in the last-mentioned place were of the least value. Pausanias says that they were to be found in Phocis. As the coccus is mentioned likewise by Moses and other Hebrew writers, kermes must have been met with at that period in some of the remote countries of the East[1157 - Bochart. Hierozoicon, vol. ii. lib. iv. cap. 27, p. 624.]. Bochart has quoted passages from the manuscript works of Arabian authors, which undoubtedly allude also to kermes; and I shall class among these, without any hesitation, the account of Ctesias, which has been copied by Photius, Ælian, and the poet Phile, though in more than one circumstance it deviates from the truth. It has already been considered by Tyson and Delaval as alluding to kermes, or rather the American cochineal, which Tyson, however, seems to confound with the genus of insects Coccinella, in English called the lady-bird[1158 - Tyson’s Anatomy of a Pigmy, 1751, 4to. – Delaval’s Experimental Inquiry into the Cause of the Changes of Colours in Opake Bodies, 1777, 4to.].

That the kermes-oak still grows and produces kermes[1159 - The insect is not natural to the tree, but adventitious. As all rosebushes have not tree-lice, nor all houses bugs; so all ilices, or oaks, have not kermes.] in the Levant, Greece, Palestine, Persia and India, is sufficiently proved by the testimony of modern travellers. Bellon and Tournefort saw kermes collected in the island of Crete or Candia[1160 - Bellonii Itin. i. 17. – Tournefort, Voy. du Levant, i. p. 19.]; the former saw them also between Jerusalem and Damascus[1161 - Bellon. ii. 88. – Roger, Voyage de la Terre Sainte, i. 2. – Voyages de Monconys, i. p. 179. – Brown’s Travels in Africa, &c.]; and he informs us that the greater part of them was sent to Venice. That they are indigenous in Persia, is expressly affirmed by Chardin. The kermes of Spain are so well known that it is not necessary to bring proofs of their being a production of that country. Dioscorides says that the Spanish kermes were bad[1162 - In opposition to this account some have asserted that Spanish kermes are praised in Petronius, cap. 119; but the passage varies so much, in different editions, that no certain conclusion can be drawn from it. See the excellent edition of Mich. Hadrianides. Amstelod. 1669, 8vo, p. 419. If we even read, with Hardouin and others,Hesperium coccum laudabat miles,the soldier might mention kermes among those productions of Spain of which he was fond, though he did not consider it as the best. Hardouin says, “Loquitur de minio Hispanico;” but that was a colour for painting.]; and we are expressly told by Garidel, that they are still of less value than the French.

With the real nature of kermes the ancients were not acquainted. By the greater part they were considered as the proper fruit of the tree; and although they remarked the insects, it was a common opinion that they were produced from putrefaction without propagation; and on this account they did not perceive their real origin. They imagined that the insects were the effects of corruption; and Pliny speaks as if he conceived that certain species were liable to this fault more than others. They were therefore named scolecion, and less valued. But in another passage he calls kermes, not improperly, a scurf or scab of the tree, scabies fruticis. Dioscorides says that the kermes appeared on the tree like lentils, a comparison with which Matthiolus is highly displeased; but it cannot be altogether unnatural, as many of the moderns, who never read the writings of the Greeks, compare them also to lentils or peas. The account, that a kind of kermes in Sicily, like small snails, was collected by the women with their mouths, seems to be attended with more difficulty. The comparison of snails, which may not be altogether inconsistent, I shall admit; but the gathering with the mouth is too much contrary to common sense not to be disputed. Commentators, therefore, have proposed various emendations, which seem to be drawn from the different readings; but the common one alluded to must be very old, as it has been adopted by Serapion in his translation[1163 - Cap. 311, p. 210.]. Marcellus and Cornarius are of opinion that a word must be inserted, expressive of the time when the kermes were gathered; and that instead of “with the mouth,” ought to be read “in summer[1164 - These writers propose to read ἐν τῷ θέρει instead of τῷ στόματι; but the variation here is too great to be admitted.].” For my part, I think a word signifying some instrument employed by the women in collecting them would be more proper; for the Grecian women, according to Bellon’s account, use still for that purpose a small instrument shaped like a sickle. In France[1165 - Garidel, p. 254.] and other countries, the women suffer the nails of their fingers to grow, in order that they may assist them in their labour[1166 - Having mentioned the above passage to Professor Tychsen, he suggested an emendation which, in my opinion, is preferable to any I have hitherto seen: “We must read,” said he, “τῷ στόνυχι, which transcribers may have readily mistaken and changed into the word στόματι, with which, perhaps, they were better acquainted. Στόνυξ signified not only the extremity of the nail but also any kind of instrument, and even weapons, in which last sense it occurs more than once in Lycophron.” See Hesychius. Much more forced and improbable is the amendment proposed by Salmasius, which may be found in his Annotations on Solinus.]. However this may be, both Dioscorides and Galen ascribe to kermes an astringent, bitter taste; but I shall leave to the examination of physicians the medicinal qualities for which they have extolled them. I shall remark only, as a technologist, that kermes was used formerly in dyeing purple to give what is called the ground; but our dyers employ it to communicate a scarlet colour, which, without doubt, excels the purple of the ancients.

The first-mentioned use of kermes in dyeing seems to have been continued through every century. In the middle ages, as they are called, we meet with kermes under the name of vermiculus or vermiculum; and on that account cloth dyed with them was called vermiculata. Hence the French word vermeil, and its derivative vermilion, as is well-known, had their extraction; the latter of which originally signified the red dye of kermes, but it is now used for any red paint, and also for finely pounded cinnabar. In France and Spain, at present, kermes, as soon as they are gathered, are besprinkled with vinegar and dried in the sun; but it appears that in the middle ages they were not dried sufficiently, and that they were put into leather bottles to prevent them from making their escape[1167 - The following passage, highly worthy of notice, taken from Gervasii Tilberiensis Otia Imperialia ad Ottonem IV. Imperatorem, iii. 55; a work which the author, a very learned man for his time, wrote in the year 1211, will serve to illustrate what I have said above: “De vermiculo. In regno Arelatensi (kingdom of Arles, which formerly belonged to the dukes of Burgundy) et confinio maritimo est arbor cujus sarcina pretium facit duodecim nummorum Wighorniensium. Ejus fructus in flore facit pretium quinquaginta librarum. Ejus cortex ad onus vestis pretium habet quinque solidorum. Vermiculus hic est, quo tinguntur pretiosissimi regum panni, sive serici, ut examiti, sive lanci, ut scharlata. Et est mirandum, quod nulla vestis linea colorem vermiculatum recipit, sed sola vestis quæ ex vivo animanteque vel quovis animato decerpitur.” [The author here is undoubtedly right, as animal substances take a dye more readily than vegetable.] “Vermiculus autem ex arbore, ad modum ilicis et quantitatem dumi pungitiva folia habente, prodit ad pedem, nodulum faciens mollem ad formam ciceris” (the same comparison as that of Dioscorides), “aquosum, et, cum exterius colorem habeat nebulæ et roris coagulati, interius rubet; et cum ungue magisterialiter decerpitur, ne, tenui rupta pellicula, humor inclusus effluat, postquam exsiccatur et corio includitur. – Cum enim tempus solstitii æstivi advenerit, ex se ipso vermiculos generat, et nisi coriis subtiliter consutis includerentur, omnes fugerent ut in nihilum evanescerent. Hinc est, quod vermiculus nominatur propter dissolutionem quam in vermes facile facit, ex natura roris Maialis, a quo generatur; unde et illo tantum mense colligitur. Arbor autem vermiculum generans vulgo Analis nuncupatur.” – This book may be found in Leibnitii Scriptor. Rerum Brunsvic. 1.]. In preparing the liquid dye, dyers used Egyptian alum, the only kind then to be had, and also urine[1168 - Muratori has published, in the second part of Antiquitat. Italic. Medii Ævi, p. 379, a treatise which appears to have been written in the ninth century, or in the time of Charlemagne, and which contains a great many receipts respecting dyeing and other arts. Among these is the receipt then commonly used for dyeing red, Compositio vermiculi. It is much to be regretted that the manuscript was so illegible that there are whole passages entirely destitute of sense, and that many words occur of which no one has given, or perhaps ever will be able to give, an explanation. We find, however, that the kermes were boiled with urine in a linen bag (in linteolo raro): addis hurinam expumatam. The other ingredients I confess I do not understand. What is luzarim, lulacim, quianus, coccaris? Many of these words seem to signify not simple but compounded pigments. Lulacim, by p. 378, appears to have been the expressed juice of some plant boiled with alum. “Coccarin nascitur in folio cedrin non tritæ.” Besides the word vermiculum, the word coccum also occurs: “Coccum delabas in urina.” In the last sentence we ought to read coctum.]. This dye seems to have been known in Germany so early as the twelfth century; for among the productions of the country which Henry the Lion sent as a present to the Greek emperor we find scarlata[1169 - See Barth. ad Guil. Britonis Philippidos libr. xii. Arnoldus Lubecensis, at the end of Helmoldi Chronicon Slavorum, lib. iii. cap. 4: “Præmiserat autem dux munera multa et optima juxta morem terræ nostræ, equos pulcherrimos sellatos et vestitos, loricas, gladios, vestes de scharlatto et vestes lineas tenuissimas.” See Fischer’s Geschichte des Teutschen Handels, Hanover, 1758, 8vo, i. p. 490. But can “munera juxta morem terræ nostræ” be with propriety translated “the productions of the country?” With all due respect to the extensive reading and great learning of Professor Fischer, I must warn the reader against some errors which occur in his book, and against his too bold assertions. From what he says, p. 448, one would suppose that he compared the kermes to our acorns; but the fruit only of the kermes-tree, as being a species of oak, has the figure of an acorn. In p. 493, he ventures to criticise Professor J. H. Schulze, who, in Dissertat. de Granorum Kermes Coccionellæ Convenientia, Viribus, et Usu, Halæ, 1743, adopts the opinion of a Dutchman (not an Englishman) De Ruuscher, which has been completely justified, that cochineal is an insect. According to Professor Fischer, both the insect and the acorn are cochineal. He talks of plantations of the kermes-tree among the ancients, and seems to believe that the Celts brought kermes along with them to Galatia, from their original country, in the same manner as the Europeans carried with them to America the corn of Europe. Kermes, however, are insects which cannot be transplanted, and I do not find any proof that there were ever plantations of them. [This assertion is far from correct. The true cochineal insect has been introduced from Mexico into Java, Spain, and recently into Algiers. The Journal de Pharmacie for Feb. 1844, contains a long account, by M. Simounet, of the success of the cochineal plantations in Algiers.] People collected kermes in the places where they happened to find them. The comparison of cochineal with the lady-cow, or lady-bird, as it is called, p. 493, is altogether improper, as that insect is the Coccinella, which has no affinity to cochineal. His proposal to place the Coccinellæ, or lady-birds, on the kermes-oak, or on the Scleranthus (perennial knawell), is totally impracticable; and even were they to remain there for eternity, they would never become cochineal or kermes.].

Our ancestors, in all probability, procured their kermes from the southern part of France, or rather from Spain. The Arabians, who from the earliest periods had been acquainted with this production in Africa, found it in Spain, and employed it there for dyeing, and as an article of commerce; and on this account, as appears, the Arabic name kermes, or alkermes, became so common[1170 - Matthiolus, in his Annotations on Dioscorides, p. 725, says that the monks who wrote a Commentary on Mesues assert that the kermes of the Arabians, the Coccus radicum, is not the Coccus arborum; but he refutes this idea upon the grounds that the Arabians themselves say everything of their kermes that is related of them by Dioscorides. I am almost induced to conjecture that the monks made this assertion in order to render more agreeable that tribute which was paid to them, in some countries, under the name of St. John’s blood.]. Salmasius thinks that the Arabs borrowed this word from the Latins, and that it is formed from vermes[1171 - Salmasius in Solinum, p. 854.]; but even if we allow that it is not an original Arabic word, it is perhaps more probable that it is of Celtic extraction, as is the opinion of Astruc[1172 - Histoire Naturelle de Languedoc. Par. 1737, 4to, p. 472.]. Guer or quer signified in the Celtic language a green (evergreen) oak; and in Lower Languedoc, uncultivated land on which the kermes-oak grows is still called garrigues. From this guer or quer Astruc is inclined to derive also the Latin word quercus, the etymology of which is nowhere else to be found. This conjecture is of the more importance, as mes in some parts signifies the fruit of the oak; so that guermes or kermes would be the acorns, les glands du chesne. Although kermes are not acorns, we cannot reject this appellation as improbable. Having requested the opinion of Professor Tychsen, as being well-acquainted with the Arabic language, on this subject, he readily complied with my desire, and I have given it in the note below, in his own words[1173 - “The word kermes, karmes, and, with the article, al kermes, is at present in the East the common name of the animal which produces the dye, as well as of the dye itself. Both words have by the Arabs and the commerce of the Levant been introduced into the European languages. Kermes, Span. al charmes, al quermes, or more properly alkermes, alkarmes. Ital. cremesino, &c.“To what language the word originally belongs cannot with certainty be determined. There are grounds for conjecturing several derivations from the Arabic, for example, karasa, extremis digitis tenuit, which would not ill-agree with στόνυξ; and karmis signifies imbecillus; but this word may be derived from the small insect, as well as the insect from it. As all these derivations, however, are attended with grammatical difficulties, and as the Arabians, according to their own account, got the dye and the word from Armenia, it appears rather to be a foreign appellation which they received with the thing signified, when they overran Upper Asia. Jbn Beithar in Bochart, Hierozoicon, ii. p. 625, calls kermes an Armenian dye; and the Arabian lexicographers, from whom Giggeus and Castellus made extracts, explain the kindred word karmasal, coccineus, vermiculatus, as an Armenian word.“This dye however was undoubtedly known to the Hebrews, the Phœnicians, and the Egyptians, long before the epoch of the Arabians in the East. Among the Hebrews the dye occurs, though not clearly, under other names, tola schani, or simply tola, in their oldest writer, Moses. Tola is properly the worm, and according to the analogy of kermes, worm-dye, scarlet. The additional word schani signifies either double-dyed, or, according to another derivation, bright, deep red dye. For both significations sufficient grounds and old authorities might be quoted; but the former is the most usual, and on account of its analogy with δίβαφον, seems to be the most probable.“But was the coccus known so early? Is not tola, the worm-dye, perhaps the same with purple, because the ancients made no distinction between vermis and snail? I believe not. For purple the Orientals have a particular name, argaman, argevan, which is accurately distinguished from tola, and is often added to it as something distinct. All the ancients therefore translate the Hebrew word tola by κόκκος, kermes, zehori and zehorito (deep red, bright dye), which words they never put for argaman. As the Phœnicians traded at so early a period with Spain and other countries, where the kermes are indigenous, it may be readily comprehended how that dye was known in Palestine about and before the time of Moses.“It must have been known also in Egypt about the same epoch; for when Moses, in the wilderness, required scarlet to ornament the tabernacle, it could have been procured only from that country. Whether kermes be indigenous in Egypt, I do not know. On the word καλάϊνον, quoted by Bochart from Hesychius as Egyptian, the abbreviation of which, laia, in the Ethiopic language signifies scarlet, I lay no great stress, because it cannot be proved, – 1st, that the word is originally Egyptian, as it occurs several times in the Greek writers and in various significations; and 2ndly, that it signifies scarlet dye, because the ancients explain it sometimes by purple, sometimes by sea-colour. See Bochart, l. c. p. 730. If the word be Egyptian, it signifies rather red dye in general than defines purple colour. At any rate, there is in Coptic for the latter a peculiar word, scadschi, or sanhadschi. The latter is explained by Kircher in Prodrom. Copt. p. 337, ‘mercator purpuræ, vermiculus coccineus, purpura,’ which is altogether vague and contradictory. The Arabic lexicographer, whom he ought to have translated, gives a meaning which expresses only purple ware.“If one might venture a supposition respecting the language of a people whose history is almost bare conjecture, I would ask if the Coptic dholi was the name of scarlet in Egypt. The lexicographers explain it by a worm, a moth; but in those passages of the translation of the Bible which I have compared another word is always used, when allusion is made to worms which gnaw or destroy. Was dholi the name of the worm that yields a dye? As dholi sounds almost like the Hebræo-Phœnician tola, we might farther conjecture that the Egyptians received both the name and the thing signified from the Phœnicians. But this is mere opinion. The following conclusions seem to be the natural result of the above observations: —“1st. Scarlet, or the kermes-dye, was known in the East in the earliest ages, before Moses, and was a discovery of the Phœnicians in Palestine, but certainly not of the small wandering Hebrew tribes.“2nd. Tola was the ancient Phœnician name used by the Hebrews, and even by the Syrians; for it is employed by the Syrian translator, Isaiah, chap. i. v. 18. Among the Jews, after their captivity, the Aramæan word zehori was more common.“3rd. This dye was known also to the Egyptians in the time of Moses; for the Israelites must have carried it along with them from Egypt.“4th. The Arabs received the name kermes, with the dye, from Armenia and Persia, where it was indigenous, and had been long known; and that name banished the old name in the East, as the name scarlet has in the West. For the first part of this assertion we must believe the Arabs.“5th. Kermes were perhaps not known in Arabia; at least they were not indigenous, as the Arabs appear to have had no name for them.“6th. Kermes signifies always red dye; and when pronounced short, it becomes deep red. I consider it, therefore, as a mere error of the translation when, in Avicenna, iii. Fen. 21, 13, kermesiah is translated purpureitas. It ought to be coccineum.”]. It deserves to be remarked, that carmesin, carmin, cramoisi of the French, and charmesi, chermesino of the Italians, and other like words, hence derive their origin.

The coccus found on the roots of some plants, as far as I know, has not been mentioned by the ancients. That these insects however were collected in Germany in the twelfth century, was first proved, as I think, by J. L. Frisch[1174 - Beschreibung von Allerley Insekten. Berl. 1736, 4to, vol. v. p. 10.]. We are told that in this, and at least in the following century, several monasteries caused their vassals to collect this coccus, and bring to them by way of tribute[1175 - The ancient Spaniards, according to Pliny’s account, were obliged to pay tribute in kermes to the Romans; and we are told by Bellon, that the Turks exacted a tribute of the like kind from the modern Greeks. It appears, therefore, that the monks imitated the example of the Romans.], and that those who could not deliver the production in kind were obliged to pay, in its stead, a certain sum of money. The measure by which it was delivered was called coppus, in German Kopf, which word signified formerly not only a globular drinking-vessel, but also a measure both for dry and liquid things. It is still retained in the latter sense in Zurich, Aachen, Regensburg, Austria, and several other places[1176 - See Krunitz’s Encyclopedie, xliv. p. 2.]. As the coccus was gathered at midsummer (St. John’s day), it was called St. John’s blood; probably because the clergy wished by that appellation to make this revenue appear as a matter of religion; and that name is still continued among the country people. As the monks and nuns carried on at that time various trades, particularly that of weaving, they could employ the St. John’s blood to very good purpose[1177 - In Leibnitii Collectanea Etymologica, Hanoveræ, 1717, 8vo, p. 467, there is a catalogue of the effects and revenues of the church at Prüm, where a monastery of Benedictines was established as early as the eighth century. This catalogue, which was drawn up in the year 1222, says, “Solvit unusquisque pro vermiculo denarios sex.” But as allusion is made here to people who lived near Metz in Lorraine, it may be conjectured that we are to understand not Coccus radicum, but Coccus arborum, which they might have procured from thence. For this doubt, however, there is no room in Descriptio Censuum, Proventuum, ac Fructuum ex Prædiis Monasterii S. Emmerammi, in the year 1301, to be found in Pezii Thesaurus Anecdotorum Novissimus, i. p. 69. We are there told, “Singuli dant sex denarios pro vermiculo;” and p. 69 and 74, “singuli dant vasculum vermiculi;” p. 76, “reddunt vermiculi coppos duo.” The people of whom these passages speak belonged to the monastery of St. Emmeran, at Regensburg, and were settled in Bavaria. Papon relates in Histoire Générale de Provence, ii. p. 356, that the archbishop of Arles, in the middle of the twelfth century, sold to the Jews the kermes collected at St. Chamas and other parts of his diocese.].

At later periods I find mention of the coccus only in the works of naturalists, such as those of Cornarius[1178 - In Dioscoridem, iv. 39.], Scaliger[1179 - De subtilitate; exercit. 325, § 13.], and others; but how long the use of it, and the collecting of it for religious houses, continued, I cannot determine; perhaps longest in Poland. From that country, even at present (1792), a considerable quantity of it is sent every year to Venice; and I am inclined to believe that some of it is collected still in the county of Mark, and other parts of Germany. The following, as far as I can find, are the reasons why this indigenous production has lost its value. First, the root-kermes contain less colouring matter than the kermes of France and Spain. Secondly, the collecting of the former is more laborious as well as more tedious; and after they ceased to be paid in natura to the monasteries, they became too dear to stop the sale of those of France and Spain. But when the American cochineal, which is undoubtedly a far superior pigment, was in latter times made an article of commerce, and was sent to Europe in large quantities for dyeing, as it could be procured at all times, and in abundance, at a price which, if not low, was at least moderate, considering its excellent quality, from Mexico, where labour was cheaper[1180 - The price of cochineal has in latter times fallen. In the year 1728 it cost fifty-eight schellings Flemish per pound; but in May 1786 it cost only twenty-seven and a half. [In 1814 the price of the best cochineal in this country was as high as 36s., 39s., but it has since gone on regularly declining till it has sunk to from 4s. to 6s. per pound.] Sifted cochineal is dearer than unsifted. It is often adulterated in Spain, but oftener in Holland, with the wild cochineal, as it is called. Some years ago an Englishman adulterated this article by mixing it with red wax; but the fraud required too laborious preparation, and was attended with too little profit to be long continued. [In France it is frequently adulterated with talc and white lead with a view of increasing its weight; and in London with sulphate of baryta or heavy spar and bone or ivory black].], and where it was cultivated in plantations formed on purpose, the French and Spanish kermes were entirely forgotten, as appears by a French ordinance of 1671 respecting dye-stuffs: and this was the case much more with the German, which, in all probability, will never turn to great account, though some have entertained a contrary opinion.

Mexico, or New Spain, the original country of the cochineal, which word appears to be the diminutive of coccus[1181 - There is reason to think that the Spaniards gave as names to several American articles the diminutives of like Spanish or European productions. Thus sarsaparilla signifies prickly vine-stock; platina little silver. Is the cause of this to be referred to the Spanish grandezza?], was discovered by the Spaniards in 1518 and the years following. Who first remarked this profitable production, and made it known in Europe, I have not been able to discover. Some assert that the native Mexicans, before they had the misfortune of being visited by the Christians, were acquainted with cochineal, which they employed in painting their houses and dyeing their clothing[1182 - Raynal, Histoire des Indes. Gen. 1780, 4 vols. ii. p. 77.]; but others maintain the contrary[1183 - Algemeine Geschichte der Länder und Völker von Amerika, Halle 1753, 2 vols. 4to, ii. p. 7.]. The Spaniards, who had long used kermes in their own country, could not fail soon to observe the superiority of the American; and I find by Herrera, that the king in the year 1523 desired to be informed by Cortez, whether what he had been told was true, that kermes were to be found in abundance in Mexico, and if they could, as was supposed, be sent with advantage to Spain. He requested him, should this information be true, to pay attention to it, and to cause them to be collected with diligence. This commodity must soon after have begun to be an object of commerce; for Guicciardini, who died in 1589, mentions cochineal among the articles procured then by the merchants of Antwerp from Spain[1184 - See Anderson’s Hist. Commerce, iv. p. 73. It is possible however that Guicciardini may have meant Spanish kermes.]. The plant on which the animal lives, belongs to the genus Cactus, and in Mexico is called nopal or tuna, though several plants of the same kind seem to be comprehended under the latter name. One species is the Opuntia, which has become indigenous in Spain, Portugal, and Italy, and which is not scarce in our green-houses. A second species is the cochinillifera. Oviedo[1185 - Histoire Naturelle et Générale des Indes. Paris, 1556, fol. p. 122, 130. [Figures of the Opuntia cochinillifera and of the cochineal insects, will be found in Pereira’s Materia Medica, vol. ii. p. 1850.]] described and gave figures of two kinds of tuna; but of the cochineal he makes no mention. He speaks however of an excellent dye which the Americans prepared from the fruit, and formed into small cakes; but he afterwards acknowledges that he had received no authentic account on this subject. I nevertheless suspect that these cakes were made of cochineal; for Hernandez says that such were made in his time.

With the first cochineal, a true account of the manner in which it was procured must have reached Europe, and become publicly known. Acosta in 1530, and Herrera in 1601, as well as Hernandez and others, gave so true and complete a description of it, that the Europeans could entertain no doubt respecting its origin. The information of these authors, however, was either overlooked or considered as false, and disputes arose whether cochineal was insects or worms, or the berries or seeds of certain plants. The Spanish name grana, confounded with granum, may have given rise to this contest; but there is not, perhaps, in all natural history a point which can be so fully cleared up as this can by the most undoubted testimony. A Dutchman, named Melchior de Ruusscher, affirmed in a society, from oral information he had obtained in Spain, that cochineal consisted of small animals. Another person, whose name he has not made known, maintained the contrary with so much heat and violence, that the dispute at length ended in a bet. Ruusscher charged a Spaniard, one of his friends, who was going to Mexico, to procure for him in that country authentic proofs of what he had asserted. These proofs, legally confirmed in October 1725, by the court of justice in the city of Antiquera, in the valley of Oaxaca, arrived at Amsterdam in the autumn of the year 1726. I have been informed that Ruusscher upon this got possession of the sum betted, which amounted to the whole property of the loser; but that, after keeping it a certain time, he again returned it, deducting only the expenses he had been at in procuring the evidence, and in causing it to be published. It formed a small octavo volume, with the following title, printed in red letters: The History of Cochineal, proved by authentic documents[1186 - The title in the original is, Natuerlyke Historie van de Couchenille, &c. Amst. 1729, 8vo. This work is scarce. A German translation of it may be found in (C. Mylius) Physikalischen Belustigungen. Berlin, 1751, 8vo, i. p. 43.]. These proofs sent from New Spain are written in Dutch, French, and Spanish.

It may be readily supposed, that the high esteem in which this production was held would soon induce people to endeavour to convey these insects to other countries in order to breed them. This the Spaniards did every thing in their power to prevent; and notwithstanding the severity of the means which they employed, attempts were made for that purpose. When Rolander, a scholar of Linnæus, was in America, he sent to Upsal, at the request of that celebrated naturalist, a plant, with the insects upon it. The plant arrived in the year 1756, when Linnæus was engaged with his pupils. The gardener, who was not acquainted with the nature of it, cleared it from what he thought vermin, and planted it; so that Linnæus, when he returned from his class, did not find a single insect alive. This circumstance, which he has mentioned in his Systema Naturæ, I was told by himself. I am however of opinion, that this was not the real cochineal, but the other kind spoken of by Sylvester; as the former, according to the latest information, can scarcely be procured even with more labour and expense than Rolander could bestow, and would hardly stand such a long voyage to the northern regions. The spurious kind were sent from Jamaica to England, on the Opuntia ficus Indica, which was planted by Miller[1187 - Miller’s Gardener’s Dictionary.], but the insects did not live above three or four months. Thiery, a young French naturalist, brought the real cochineal to St. Domingo in the year 1777, at so much hazard that he deserves a place in the martyrology of the naturalist; but after his death, which soon followed, the insects perished through the avarice or negligence of his successors; and in that island there are none now to be found but the spurious kind[1188 - Traité de la culture du nopal et de l’éducation de la cochenille. Au Cap-Francois 1787, 8vo.].

I am inclined to believe that the art of employing kermes to dye a beautiful red colour was discovered in the East at a very early period; that it was soon so much improved as to excel even the Tyrian purple; and that it contributed to cause the proper purple to be at length abandoned. From the costly red dyes extolled so much by the Hebrew writers, and which, according to the opinion of learned commentators, were made from kermes, I shall not venture to adduce any proofs, as I am not acquainted with the Oriental languages to examine their accounts with accuracy; but I have found a passage in Vopiscus[1189 - In Vita Aureliani, cap. 29.], which seems to render my conjecture very probable. That author informs us, that the king of Persia sent to the emperor Aurelian, besides other articles of great value, some woollen cloth, which was of a much costlier and brighter purple colour than any that had been ever seen in the Roman empire, and in comparison of which all the other purple cloth worn by the emperor and the ladies of the court appeared dull and faded. In my opinion, this cloth, which was of a beautiful purple red colour, was not dyed with the liquor of the murex, but with kermes. This idea was indeed not likely to occur to the Romans, who were acquainted only with the purple of the murex, and who had less experience in the arts in general than in that of robbing and plundering, or who at any rate in that respect were inferior to the Orientals. The Roman emperors caused this supposed purple to be sought for in India by the most experienced dyers, who, not being able to find it, returned with a vague report that the admired Persian purple was produced by the plant Sandix. I am well aware, that some commentators have supposed that the Sandix was our madder[1190 - Those who are desirous of further information respecting the sandix, may consult Salmasius on Solinus, p. 810, and the editor of the Cyneget of Gratius Faliscus, x. 86. p. 46.]. Hesychius, however, says, very confidently, that the sandix is not a plant, but a kind of shrubby tree which yields a dye like the coccus[1191 - Some have considered sandix as a mineral. Minerals however can be used for painting but not for dyeing. It may be replied that the Romans themselves dyed with kermes at this period, and that they must have easily procured it. But they understood the art of dyeing with it so badly that they employed it only for giving the ground of their purple, and on that account it must have appeared improbable to them that the people in India could produce by it a more beautiful colour than their purple was. From the like ignorance in modern times, indigo was decried, because people imagined that a complete colour could not be communicated by it; and this false conclusion retarded many improvements in the art of dyeing. It is very likely that the Greeks and the Romans were unacquainted with the effect produced upon kermes by acids, which the Persians and Indians used.]. The Roman dyers, perhaps, prejudiced in favour of the murex, made that only the object of their search; and their labour proving fruitless, they might have heard something of kermes, or the kermes-oak, which they did not fully understand. Our dyers, even at present, believe many false accounts respecting the dye-stuffs which they use daily.

In later times, when it was known that the beautiful Oriental kermes-dye was not properly purple, it was no longer called by that name, but was considered as a new dye, and acquired a new appellation. Cloth dyed with it was called scarlata, squarlata, scarleta, scarlatina, scharlatica. That these words have an affinity to our scarlet, every one allows, but it may be difficult to discover their origin. Pezronius[1192 - Antiquit. Celt. p. 69, 70.] affirms that they are of Celtic extraction, and have the same signification as Galaticus rubor. Astruc, as I have already shown, derives kermes from the same language, which, however, like the Egyptian history, is often employed to explain what people cannot otherwise explain, because so little is known of both that much contradiction is not to be apprehended. Others wish to make scarlet from the quisquilium, cusculium, or scolecium of Pliny. To some the word appears to be composed of the first half of kermes and lack, with the addition of only an S, and every one is left at liberty to determine at pleasure, whether lack is to be understood as the Arabic for red, or the German word lacken cloth. In the first case it signifies the same as vermiculare rubrum; in the latter pannus vermicularis. Stiler[1193 - Spaten (Stiler) der Teutschen Sprache Stammbaum, 1691, 4to, p. 1062.] says scarlach is entirely German, and compounded of schor the fire, and lacken cloth, so that its real signification is fire-cloth, fire-coloured cloth. Reiske, on the other hand, asserts, that the word is originally the Arabic scharal, which means the kermes-dye[1194 - In his annotations on Constantini Libri de Ceremoniis Aulæ Byzantinæ, ii. p. 137. Reiske also on this occasion gives the derivation from Charlatan, a mountebank, juggler, circumforaneus, agyrta, because such people formerly on account of their red clothes were called scarlatati or scarlatani. Other conjectures respecting this word may be found in Menage, Dictionnaire Etymologique. See in the same work also, p. 498, the word écarlate. In ancient French writers the highest degree of any colour in its perfection is called écarlate, and we therefore meet with écarlate blanche, écarlate verte. Braun de Vestitu Sacerd. Hebræor. Amstelod. 1701, 4to, lib. i. cap. 15, p. 229, says, “Salacka, Tyrian red, from sar, Tyrus.” He controverts the opinion of Gronovius that scarlatum is derived from Galaticum.]. Which of these conjectures is most agreeable to truth, cannot with certainty be concluded; but that the word is older than Dillon affirms it to be, on the authority of a Spaniard, can be proved. Dillon says that it was first used by Roderick, archbishop of Toledo, who finished his history of Spain in 1243[1195 - Dillon’s Travels through Spain, 1780, p. 21. Rod. Toletanus De Rebus Hispan. lib. vii. 1.]. Vossius[1196 - G. J. Vossius De Vitiis Sermonis.] has quoted several writers who use escarletum or scarletum. The oldest is Cæsarius, who lived about the year 1227. Matthew Paris, who wrote about the year 1245, used the word in referring to the year 1134. But I find that the emperor Henry III. in the middle of the eleventh century, conferred upon the count of Cleves the burg-graviate of Nimeguen, on condition of his delivering to him yearly three pieces of scarlet cloth made of English wool[1197 - Pontani Historia Gelrica, 1639, fol. p. 83: “Tres pannos scarlitinos Anglicanos.” The year seems to have been 1050. In Lunig’s Codex Diplom. Germaniæ, ii. p. 1739, may be seen a document of the year 1172, in which the emperor Frederick I. confers on the count of Gueldres the heritable jurisdiction of Nimeguen, on condition, “ut ipse et ejus successores imperatori de eodem telonio singulis annis tres pannos scarlacos bene rubeos Anglicenses ardentis coloris – assignare deberet.”]. The word may be often found in the twelfth century. It occurs in Petrus Mauritius[1198 - In Statutis Cluniacensibus, cap. 18.], who died in 1157, and also in the writings of Arnold, who, in 1175, was the first abbot of Lubeck.

Of the preparation and goodness of the ancient scarlet we certainly know nothing: but as we find in many old pieces of tapestry of the eleventh century, and perhaps earlier, a red which has continued remarkably beautiful even to the present time, it cannot at any rate be denied that our ancestors extolled their scarlet not without reason. We may however venture to assert, that the scarlet prepared at present is far superior, owing principally to the effects of a solution of tin. This invention may be reckoned among the most important improvements of the art of dyeing, and deserves a particular relation.

The tincture of cochineal alone yields a purple colour, not very pleasant, which may be heightened to the most beautiful scarlet by a solution of tin in aqua regia, or muriatic acid[1199 - See Porner’s Anleitung zur Farbekunst. Leipzig, 1785, 8vo, p. 16.]. M. Ruhlenkamp at Bremen, one of the most learned dyers of Germany, and who has studied with great care every new improvement of his art, gave me the history of this scarlet dye, as I have already related in my Introduction to Technology[1200 - Page 113.]. The well-known Cornelius Drebbel, who was born at Alkmaar, and died at London in 1634, having placed in his window an extract of cochineal, made with boiling water, for the purpose of filling a thermometer, some aqua regia dropped into it from a phial, broken by accident, which stood above it, and converted the purple dye into a most beautiful dark red. After some conjectures and experiments, he discovered that the tin by which the window-frame was divided into squares had been dissolved by the aqua-regia, and was the cause of this change. He communicated his observation to Kuffelar, an ingenious dyer at Leyden, who was afterwards his son-in-law[1201 - Monconys mentions in his Travels, p. 408, Dr. Keiffer, a son-in-law of Drebbel, who was a good chemist.]. The latter brought the discovery to perfection, and employed it some years alone in his dye-house, which gave rise to the name of Kuffelar’s-colour[1202 - In Borrichii Dissertat. ii. p. 104: Color Kufflerianus.]. Becher calls him Kuffler. Kunkel, in a passage which I cannot again find, makes his name Kuster, and says that he was a German. In the course of a little time the secret became known to an anabaptist called Gulich, and also to another person of the name of Van der Vecht, who taught it to the brothers Gobelins in France. Giles Gobelin, a dyer at Paris, in the time of Francis I. had found out an improvement of the then usual scarlet dye; and as he had remarked that the water of the rivulet Bievre, in the suburbs of St. Marceau, was excellent for his art, he erected on it a large dye-house, which, out of ridicule, was called Folie-Gobelins[1203 - Rabelais, xi. 22. Menage, Diction. Etymol. i. p. 682.], Gobelin’s-Folly. About this period, a Flemish painter, whom some name Peter Koek, and others Kloek, and who had travelled a long time in the East, established, and continued to his death in 1550, a manufactory for dyeing scarlet cloth by an improved method[1204 - Francheville, in Dissertat. sur l’Art de la Teinture des Anciens et Modernes, in Histoire de l’Académ. de Berlin, 1767, p. 67. In this dissertation, however, there is neither certainty nor proof.]. Through the means of Colbert, one of the Gobelins learned the process used for preparing the German scarlet dye from one Gluck, whom some consider as the above-mentioned Gulich, and others as Kloek; and the Parisian scarlet dye soon rose into so great repute, that the populace imagined that Gobelin had acquired his art from the devil[1205 - Suite de Teinturier parfait. Paris, 1716.]. It is well known that Louis XIV. by the advice of Colbert, purchased Gobelin’s building from his successors in the year 1667, and transformed it into a palace, to which he gave the name of Hôtel Royal des Gobelins, and which he assigned for the use of first-rate artists, particularly painters, jewellers, weavers of tapestry, and others. After that time the rivulet was no longer called Bievre, but Gobelins. About the year 1643, a Fleming, named Kepler, established the first dye-house for scarlet in England, at the village of Bow, not far from London; and on that account the colour was called at first, by the English, the Bow-dye[1206 - Anderson’s History of Commerce.]. In the year 1667, another Fleming, named Brewer, invited to England by king Charles II. with the promise of a large salary, brought this art there to great perfection[1207 - Cary’s Bemerkungen über Grossbritanniens Handel; übersetzt von Wichmann. Leipzig, 1788, i. p. 372. Boyle remarks in his Experimenta de Coloribus, Coloniæ, 1680, 4to, that a bright scarlet colour was never produced except when tin vessels were used. It appears, therefore, that he had observed the good effects of a solution of tin.]. All these accounts, however, and the names of the persons, are extremely dubious.

[Mr. Ward states in his Mexico in 1827, vol. i. p. 84, that the plantations of the Nopal (Opuntia cochinillifera), on which the cochineal insects feed, are confined to the district La Misteca in the state of Oaxaca, in Mexico. The animals are domesticated and reared with the greatest care. When the females have become fecundated and enlarged, the harvest commences. The insects are brushed off with a squirrel’s tail, and killed by immersing them in hot water, and afterwards drying them in the sun, or by the heat of a stove. Three harvests are made annually; the first being the best, since the impregnated females alone are taken; in the second the young females are also collected; and in the third both old and young ones, and skins are collected indiscriminately. Before the rainy season commences, branches of the nopal plant loaded with young insects are cut off and preserved in the houses to prevent the animals being destroyed by the weather. It is stated in a letter from Mr. Faber to Dr. Pereira (Chemical Gazette for January 15th, 1845), that the more extensive cultivators never kill the insect by immersion, but only by the baskets being placed in heated rooms or stoves.

Three kinds of cochineal are now met with in the English market: the black, silver, and foxy. Silver cochineal is the impregnated female insect, just before laying eggs; black cochineal is the female after laying and hatching the eggs. That technically known in London as “foxy” cochineal is composed of the insects of silver cochineal which have been killed by boiling water. They are thus burst, and acquire a peculiar reddish colour, very different from the fine transparent red which forms the finest black. It is said that on the average one pound of cochineal contains 70,000 dried insects. The quantity exported from and consumed in England in 1844, amounted to no less than 1,569,120 lbs.!]

WRITING-PENS

As long as people wrote upon tables covered with wax, they were obliged to use a style or bodkin made of bone, metal, or some other hard substance; but when they began to write with coloured liquids, they employed a reed, and afterwards quills or feathers. This is well-known, and has been proved by various authors[1208 - See Fabricii Bibliotheca Antiquaria, p. 959. Reimmanni Idea Systematis Antiquitatis Litterariæ, 1718, 8vo, p. 169. Astle’s Origin and Progress of Writing, 4to.]. There are two circumstances however in regard to this subject, which require some further research; and which I shall endeavour to illustrate by such information as I have been able to collect. With what kind of reeds did people write? When, and where were feathers first employed and for that purpose?

It is rather astonishing that we are ignorant of what kind of reeds the ancients used for writing, though they have mentioned the places where they grew wild, and where, it is highly probable, they grow still. Besides, we have reason to suppose that the same reeds are used even at present by all the Oriental nations; for it is well known, that among the people of the East old manners and instruments are not easily banished by new modes and new inventions. Most authors who have treated on the history of writing have contented themselves with informing their readers that a reed was employed; but the genus of plants called by the ancients Calamus and Arundo, is more numerous in species than the genus of grasses, to which their corn belonged; and it might perhaps be as difficult to determine with accuracy what kind of reed they employed for writing, as to distinguish the species of grain called far, alica, and avena.

The most beautiful reeds of this kind grew formerly in Egypt[1209 - Plin. lib. xvi. cap. 35. Martial, lib. xiv. epigram. 38.]; near Cnidus, a city and district in the province of Caria, in Asia Minor[1210 - Plin. lib. c. Catullus, carm. xxxvi. 13, mentions Cnidus arundinosa. Ausonius, epist. iv. 75, calls the reeds Cnidii nodi.]; and likewise in Armenia and Italy[1211 - Plin. lib. xvi. cap. 36.]. Those which grew in the last-mentioned country, seem to have been considered by Pliny as too soft and spongy: but his words are so obscure that little can be gathered from them; and though the above places have been explored in later times by many experienced botanists, they have not supplied us with much certain information respecting this species of reed. It is however particularly mentioned by the old botanists, who have represented it as a stem, such as I have seen in collections; but as they give no characters sufficiently precise, Linnæus was not able to assign any place in his system to the Arundo scriptoria of Bauhin[1212 - Bauhini Pinax Plantar, p. 17: Arundo scriptoria atro-rubens. Hist. Plant. ii. p. 487. Theatrum Botan. p. 273.].

Chardin speaks of the reeds which grow in the marshes of Persia, and which are sold and much sought after in the Levant, particularly for writing. He has even described them; but his account has been of no service to enlarge our botanical knowledge[1213 - “Their writing-pens are made of reeds or small hard canes of the size of the largest swan-quills, which they cut and slit in the same manner as we do ours; but they give them a much longer nib. These canes or reeds are collected towards Daurac, along the Persian Gulf, in a large fen supplied with water by the river Hellé, a place of Arabia formed by an arm of the Tigris, and another of the Euphrates united. They are cut in March, and, when gathered, are tied up in bundles and laid for six months under a dunghill, where they harden and assume a beautiful polish and lively colour, which is a mixture of yellow and black. None of these reeds are collected in any other place. As they make the best writing-pens, they are transported throughout the whole East. Some of them grow in India, but they are softer and of a paler yellow colour.” – Voyages de Chardin, vol. v. p. 49.]. Tournefort, who saw them collected in the neighbourhood of Teflis, the capital of Georgia, though his description of them is far from complete, has taught us more than any of his predecessors. We learn from his account, that this reed has small leaves, that it rises only to the height of a man, and that it is not hollow, but filled with a soft spongy substance. He has characterized it, therefore, in the following manner in his System of Botany: Arundo orientalis, tenuifolia, caule pleno, ex qua Turcæ calamos parant[1214 - “It is a kind of cane which grows no higher than a man. The stem is only three or four lines in thickness, and solid from one knot to another, that is to say filled with a white pith. The leaves, which are a foot and a half in length, and eight or nine lines in breadth, enclose the knots of the stem in a sheath; but the rest is smooth, of a bright yellowish-green colour, and bent in the form of a half-tube, with a white bottom. The panicle or bunch of flowers was not as yet fully blown, but it was whitish, silky, and like that of other reeds. The inhabitants of the country cut the stems of these reeds to write with, but the strokes they form are very coarse, and do not approach the beauty of those which we make with our pens.” – Voyage du Levant, vol. ii. p. 136.]. The same words are applied to it by Miller; but he observes that no plants of it had ever been introduced into England. That the best writing-reeds are procured from the southern provinces of Persia is confirmed by Dapper and Hanway. The former says that the reeds are sown and planted near the Persian Gulf in the place mentioned by Chardin, and he gives the same description as that traveller of the manner in which they are prepared.

The circumstance expressly mentioned by Tournefort, that these writing-reeds are not entirely hollow, seems to agree perfectly with the account given by Dioscorides[1215 - Lib. i. cap. 114. Rauwolf says in his Travels, vol. i. p. 93, “In the shops were to be sold small reeds, hollow within and smooth without, and of a brownish-red colour, which are used by the Turks, Moors, and other Eastern people, for writing.” It appears that Rauwolf did not see these reeds growing, but prepared and freed from the pith. We are told by Winkelmann, in his second Letter on the Antiquities of Herculaneum, p. 46, that for want of quills he often cut into writing-pens those reeds which grow in the neighbourhood of Naples.]. It is probable that the pith dries and becomes shrunk, especially after the preparation described by Chardin, so that the reed can be easily freed from it in the same manner as the marrowy substance in writing-quills is removed from them when prepared. Something of the like kind seems to be meant by Pliny, who, in my opinion, says that the pith dried up within the reed, which was hollow at the lower end, but at the upper end woody and destitute of pith. What follows refers to the flowers, which were employed instead of feathers for beds, and also for caulking ships. I conjectured that Forskal had given an accurate description of this reed; but when I consulted that author, I did not find what I expected. He only confirms that a great many reeds of different kinds grow near the Nile, which serve to make hedges, thatch, and wattled-walls, and which are used for various other purposes[1216 - Flora Ægyptiaco-Arabica. Havniæ, 1775, 4to, p. 47, 61.].

These reeds were split and formed to a point like our quills, but certainly it was not possible to make so clean and fine strokes, and to write so long[1217 - Those who wish to see instances of learned men who wrote a great deal and a long time with one pen, may consult J. H. Ackeri Historia Pennarum, Altenburgi, 1726. The author has collected every thing he ever read respecting the pens of celebrated men.] and so conveniently with them as one can with quills. The use of them, however, was not entirely abandoned when people began to write with quills, which in every country can be procured from an animal extremely useful in many other respects. Had the ancients been acquainted with the art of employing goose-quills for this purpose, they would undoubtedly have dedicated to Minerva, not the owl, but the goose.

A passage in Clemens of Alexandria, who died in the beginning of the third century, might on the first view induce one to conjecture that the Egyptian priests even wrote with quills. This author, after describing a procession of these priests, says the sacred writer had in his hand a book with writing-instruments, and on his head feathers[1218 - Clementis Alex. Opera. Coloniæ, 1688, fol. p. 633. The best account of these sacred writers may be found in the Prolegomena, p. 91, of Jablonski’s Pantheon Ægypt.]. But it is impossible to guess what might be the intention of these feathers or wings on the head, among a people who were so fond of symbols. Besides, Clemens tells us expressly, that one of the writing-instruments was a reed with which the priests used to write.

Some assert from a passage of Juvenal[1219 - Sat. iv. 149.], that quills were used for writing in the time of that poet; but what he says is only a metaphorical expression, such as has been employed by Horace[1220 - Od. iii. 29, 53.] and various ancient writers. Others have endeavoured to prove the antiquity of writing-quills from the figure of the goddess Egeria, who is represented with a book before her, and a feather in her right hand; but the period when this Egeria was formed is not known, and it is probable that the feather was added by some modern artist[1221 - Gronovii Thesaurus Antiq. Græc. ii. n. 28.]. No drawings in manuscripts, where the authors appear with quills, are of great antiquity. Among these is the portrait of Aristotle, in a manuscript in the library of Vienna, which, as expressly mentioned at the end, was drawn at Rome in the year 1457; and we have great reason to think that the artist delineated the figure for ornamenting his work, not after an ancient painting, but from his own imagination[1222 - Lambec. lib. vii. p. 76. – Montfaucon, Palæograph. Græca, lib. i. cap. 3, p. 21.].

If credit can be given to the anonymous author of the history of Constantius, extracts from which have been made known by Adrian de Valois, the use of quills for writing is as old as the fifth century. We are informed by this author, who lived in the above century, that Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, was so illiterate and stupid, that during the ten years of his reign he was not able to learn to write four letters at the bottom of his edicts. For this reason the four letters were cut for him in a plate of gold, and the plate being laid upon paper, he then traced out the letters with a quill[1223 - Amm. Marcellini Hist. ed. Valesii, Par. 1681, fol. p. 699. The letters might have been raised on the plate, or deeply engraven in it, so that Theodoric only followed with his pen an impression of them made upon the paper.]. This account is, at any rate, not improbable; for history supplies us with more instances of such men not destined for the throne by nature, but raised to it either by hereditary right or by accident, who had neither abilities nor inclination for those studies which it requires. The western empire was governed, almost about the time of Theodoric, by the emperor Justin, who also could not write, and who used in the like manner a piece of wood, having letters cut in it, but with this difference, that, in tracing them out, he caused his hand to be guided by one of his secretaries[1224 - It is uncertain whether the characters were followed with a style, a reed, or a quill; for γραφὶς (the word used) is the general appellation. “There have been princes, also, acquainted with writing, but so lazy that they kept a servant who could imitate their hand to subscribe for them.” Of this we have an instance in the emperor Carinus, respecting whom Vopiscus says, “Fastidium subscribendi tantum habuit, ut quendam ad subscribendum poneret qui bene suam imitaretur manum.”].

The oldest certain account however known at present respecting writing-quills, is a passage of Isidore, who died in the year 636, and who, among the instruments employed for writing, mentions reeds and feathers[1225 - Origines, lib. vi. 13, p. 132.]. Another proof of quills being used in the same century, is a small poem on a writing-pen, to be found in the works of Althelmus, called sometimes also Aldhelmus, Adelhemus, and Adelmus. This writer, descended of a noble family, was the first Saxon who wrote Latin, and who made the art of Latin poetry known to his countrymen, and inspired them with a taste for compositions of that kind. He died in the year 709[1226 - His writings may be found in Maxima Bibliotheca Patrum. Lugduni, 1677, fol. tom. xiii. In p. 27, is the following poem on a pen: —De Penna ScriptoriaMe pridem genuit candens onocrotalus albamGutture qui patulo sorbet in gurgite lymphas.Pergo ad albentes directo tramite campos,Candentique viæ vestigia cærula linquo,Lucida nigratis fuscans anfractibus arva.Nec satis est unum per campos pandere callem;Semita quin potius milleno tramite tendit,Quæ non errantes ad cœli culmina vexit.The author does not speak here of a goose-quill, but of a pelican’s, which at any rate may be as good as that of a swan.].

In the eighth century writing-pens are mentioned by Alcuin, who at that period, in the time of Charlemagne, was of service in extending literary knowledge. He composed poetical inscriptions for every part of a monastery, among which there is one even for a privy[1227 - Ad latrinium (latrinam).], and another for a writing-study. Speaking of the latter, he says that no one ought to talk in it, lest the pen of the transcriber should commit a mistake[1228 - Alcuini Opera, cura Frobenii, Ratisbonæ, 1777, 2 vols. fol. ii. p. 211.].

After the above period proofs occur which place the matter beyond all doubt. Mabillon saw a manuscript of the gospels, which had been written in the ninth century under the reign of Louis I., in which the evangelists were represented with quills in their hands. The same author mentions a like figure of the eleventh century[1229 - De Re Diplomatica, Par. 1709, fol. in Suppl. p. 51.]. In the twelfth century, Peter de Clugny, who by scholastic writers is called Venerabilis, and who died in 1157, wrote to a friend, exhorting him to assume the pen instead of the plough, and to transcribe, instead of tilling land[1230 - Petr. Venerabil. lib. i. ep. 20, ad Gislebertum. C. G. Schwarz, who quotes the passage in Exercit. de Varia Supellectili Rei Librariæ Veterum, Altorfii, 1725, 4to, § 8, ascribes them falsely to the venerable Bede, who died about the year 735.]. In short, writing-quills are often called calami by ancient and modern authors who wrote good Latin; and it is probable that this word is employed by older writers than Isidore to signify writing-pens, where, for want of other proofs, we understand reeds.

The poet Heerkens[1231 - Ger. Nic. Heerkens Aves Frisicæ, Rot. 1788, 8vo, p. 106.] has asserted, that the use of quills for writing is much older, and that the Romans became acquainted with them during their residence in the Netherlands, where they could not easily procure Egyptian reeds, and where, according to the account of Pliny[1232 - Hist. Nat. lib. x. cap. 22.], they paid so much attention to the catching of geese. That writer, however, says that this was done on account of the flesh of these animals, which they esteemed much when roasted, and of the softness of their feathers, on which they were fond of sleeping. Heerkens himself remarks, that Pliny, had he known the use of quills for writing, would not have passed it over in silence, when he gives so circumstantial an account of writing-reeds. He is of opinion also, that, as the Dutch terms of art which allude to writing, such as schryfpen, &c., are of Latin extraction, the Dutch must have acquired them as well as the things signified from the Romans. This however seems to afford very little support to his assertion. Of more importance is the observation that in an old and beautiful manuscript of Virgil, in the Medicean library, which was written soon after the time of Honorius, the thickness of the strokes, and the gradual fineness of the hair-strokes of the letters give us reason to conjecture that they must have been written by some instrument equally elastic as a quill, as it is not probable that such strokes could be made with a stiff reed[1233 - This manuscript was correctly printed by P. F. Fogginius, in quarto, in 1741. A specimen of the writing is given, p. 15. See also Virgilius Heynii, in Elenchus Codicum, p. 41.]. It is also certain that the letters of the greater part of ancient manuscripts, particularly those found at Herculaneum, are written in a much stiffer and more uniform manner. But little confidence is to be placed in this observation; for we do not know but the ancient artists may have been acquainted with some method of giving elasticity to their reeds, and may have employed them in such a manner as to produce beautiful writing.

Notwithstanding the great advantage which quills have over reeds for writing, the latter however seem to have continued long in use even with the former. This conclusion I do not form, because calamus and arundo are to be found in the works of late writers; for many authors may have employed these old Latin words to express quills, like Cassiodorus, who in the sixth century, when exhorting the monks to transcribe theological works, used both these terms indiscriminately[1234 - Divin. Lection. cap. xxx. p. m. 477, 478.]; but I found my assertion on the testimony of diplomatists, and particularly on the undoubted mention made of writing-reeds in the sixteenth century.

Men of letters, well-versed in diplomatics, assure us, from comparing manuscripts, that writing-reeds were used along with quills in the eighth century, at least in France, and that the latter first began to be common in the ninth. The papal acts, and those of synods, must however have been written with reeds much later[1235 - Nouveau Traité de Diplomatique, i. p. 537.]. In convents they were retained for texts and initials, while, for small writing, quills were everywhere employed.

I can allow little credit to a conjecture supported merely by a similarity of the strokes in writing, because it is probable that people at first would endeavour to write in as strong and coarse a manner with quills, as had been before done with reeds, in order that the writing might not seem much different from what was usual; and with quills one can produce writing both coarse and fine. M. Meiners, however, referred me to a passage in a letter of Reuchlin, which removes all doubt on the subject. When this worthy man, to whom posterity is so much indebted, was obliged to fly by the cruelty of his enemies, famine and the plague, and to leave behind him all his property, he was supplied with the most common necessaries by Pirkheimer[1236 - Reuchlin’s life may be found in Meiners’ Lebensbeschreibungen Berühmter Männer. Zurich. 1795, 8vo, vol. i.]. Among other articles the latter sent to him, in the year 1520, writing materials, good paper, pen-knives, and, instead of peacocks-feathers which he had requested, the best swan-quills. That nothing might be wanting, he added also proper reeds, of so excellent a sort, that Reuchlin considered them to be Egyptian or Cnidian[1237 - Pirkheimeri Opera, Franc. 1610, fol. p. 259.].

These reeds at that period must have been scarce and in great request, as it appears by some letters of Erasmus to Reuchlin, for my knowledge of which I am under obligations to M. Meiners, that the former received three reeds from the latter, and expressed a wish that Reuchlin, when he procured more, would send some of them to a learned man in England, who was a common friend to both[1238 - Illustrium Virorum Epistolæ ad Jo. Reuchlin.: Hagenoæ, 1519, 4to, p. 144.].

Whatever may have been the cause, about the year 1433 writing-quills were so scarce at Venice, that it was with great difficulty men of letters could procure them. We learn at any rate, that the well-known Ambrosius Traversarius, a monk of Camaldule, sent from Venice to his brother, in the above year, a bunch of quills, together with a letter, in which he said, “They are not the best, but such as I received in a present. Show the whole bunch to our friend Nicholas, that he may select a quill; for these articles are indeed scarcer in this city than at Florence[1239 - Ambrosii Traversarii Epistolæ. ed. L. Mehus. Florentiæ, 1759, 2 vols. fol. ii. p. 566.].” This Ambrosius complains likewise, that at the same period he had hardly any more ink, and requested that a small vessel filled with it might be sent to him[1240 - Ibid. p. 580.]. Other learned men complain also of the want of good ink, which they either would not or did not know how to make. Those even who deal in it seldom know of what ingredients it is principally composed.

[The softness of quill pens and the constant trouble required to mend them naturally led to the search for some substitute. Metals have supplied this, and the manufacture of metallic pens now gives occupation to an immense number of persons. Steel and other metallic pens have long been made occasionally[1241 - [The publisher has in his possession an extremely well-made metallic pen (brass) at least fifty years old, and with it a style for writing by means of smoked paper, both in a morocco pocket-book, which formerly belonged to Horace Walpole, and was sold at the Strawberry Hill sale.]], but were not extensively used on account of their stiffness; this was remedied by Mr. Perry, who, in 1830, introduced the use of apertures between the shoulder and the point. Numerous other improvements have been made, the metals have all had a trial, and pens can now be obtained of almost every form and quality. Perhaps the most perfect and durable, although the most expensive, are those in which the pen is made of gold, with a nib of osmium and iridium. The total quantity of steel annually employed in the manufacture of pens has been estimated at 120 tons, from which upwards of 200,000,000 pens are produced. One Birmingham manufacturer employed in 1838, 300 persons in making steel pens. They are also extensively manufactured in London and Sheffield. When first introduced, steel pens were eight shillings a gross; they afterwards fell to four shillings a gross, and now they are procured at Birmingham for fourpence a gross[1242 - Waterston’s Cyclopædia of Commerce, 1846.]!]

WIRE-DRAWING

It is highly probable that in early periods metals were beat with a hammer to thin plates or leaves, which were afterwards divided into small slips by means of a pair of scissors, or some other instrument; and that these slips were by a hammer and file then rounded, so as to form threads or wire. This conjecture seems to be confirmed by the oldest information respecting work of this kind. When the sacerdotal dress of Aaron was prepared, the gold was beaten and cut to threads, so that it could be interwoven in cloth[1243 - Exodus, chap. xxxix. ver. 3. – Braun, De Vestitu Sacerdotum Hebræorum, p. 173.]. We are told also that Vulcan, desirous to expose Mars and Venus, while engaged in their illicit amour, repaired to his forge, and formed on his anvil, with hammers and files, a net so fine that it could be perceived by no one, not even by the gods themselves, for it was as delicate as a spider’s web[1244 - Homer, Odyss. lib. viii. 273, 278. – Ovid. Metamorph. lib. iv. 174.]. These fine threads therefore were at that time first beat upon the anvil, and afterwards rounded by a file, but were not drawn out like our wire. I do not remember to have found a single passage in ancient authors where mention is made of metal prepared by being wire-drawn. The æs ductile of Pliny was so called because it was malleable, and could be beat into thin leaves; and he says “tenuatur in laminas[1245 - Lib. xxxiv. cap. 8.].” In my opinion, works made with threads of metal occur too seldom in the writings of the ancients, to allow us to suppose that they were acquainted with that easy and cheap method of forming these threads by wire-drawing. Wire-work is rarely mentioned, and wherever it is spoken of, it appears to have been prepared on the anvil.

Such threads of the dearest and most malleable metal, gold, seem to have been early employed for ornamenting different articles of dress, but certainly not in so ingenious and beautiful a manner as in modern times. It is probable that slips of gold were sewed upon clothes, and particularly on the seams, as is still practised with lace; and perhaps gold stars and other figures cut from thin plates of gold were applied to dresses in the same manner, as is the case at present with spangles, and perhaps they were only affixed to them with paste. People however soon began to weave or knit dresses entirely of gold threads, without the addition of any other materials; at least such seems to be the account given by Pliny[1246 - Lib. xxxiii. cap. 4. – Aldrovandus relates, in his Museum Metallicum, that the grave of the wife of the emperor Honorius was discovered at Rome about the year 1544, and that thirty-six pounds of gold were procured from the mouldered dress which contained the body.]. Of this kind was the mantle taken from the statue of Jupiter by the tyrant Dionysius[1247 - Cicero de Nat. Deor. iii. 34, 83. – Valer. Max. i. 1. exter. § 3.], and the tunic of Heliogabalus mentioned by Lampridius[1248 - Lamprid. Vita Heliogab. cap. 23.]. These consisted of real drap d’or, but the moderns give that name to cloth, the threads of which are silk wound round with silver wire flattened and gilded.

The invention of interweaving such massy gold threads in cloth is by Pliny ascribed to king Attalus; but I consider it to be much older, though I have found no certain proofs to support this opinion. I conjecture that the cloth of Attalus, so much extolled on account of its magnificence, was embroidered with the needle; for in the passage where embroidery is mentioned by Pliny for the first time, he speaks of its being invented by the Phrygians; he then mentions the cloth of Attalus; and immediately after the Babylonian, which, as is proved by several expressions in ancient authors, was certainly embroidered with the needle[1249 - Plin. lib. viii. cap. 48. That the cloth of Attalus was embroidered with the needle is proved by a passage of Silius Italicus, lib. xiv. 661. We find by Martial, lib. xiii. ep. 28, that the Babylonian cloth was also ornamented with embroidery; and the same author, lib. xiv. ep. 50, extols the weaving of Alexandria, as being not inferior to the Babylonian embroidery with the needle. In opposition to which might be quoted a passage of Tertullian De Habitu Mulierum, where he makes use of the word insuere to the Phrygian work, and of intexere to the Babylonian. By these expressions it would appear that he wished to define accurately the difference of the Phrygian and Babylonian cloth, and to show that the former was embroidered and the latter wove. But Tertullian often plays with words. Intexere is the same as insuere. In Pliny, book xxxv. ch. 9, a name embroidered with gold threads is called “aureis litteris in palleis intextum nomen.”]. If I am not mistaken, Attalus first caused woollen cloth to be embroidered (not interwoven) with threads of gold; and the doubt that Pliny assigns too late a period to the interweaving cloth with threads of gold is entirely removed. It appears that in the third century gold was interwoven with linen, that linen was embroidered with gold threads, or that gold threads were sewed upon linen, which the emperor Alexander Severus considered as folly; because by these means the linen was rendered stiff, cumbersome and inconvenient[1250 - Lamprid. Vita Alexand. Severi, c. 40.].

It was not till a much later period that silver began to be formed into threads by a like process, and to be interwoven in cloth. Salmasius and Goguet have already remarked that no mention of silver stuffs is to be found in the works of the ancients; for the passages which might be quoted from Homer speak only, without doubt, of white garments[1251 - Odyss. lib. v. 230; x. 23, 24.]. Pliny certainly would not have omitted this manner of preparing silver, had it been usual in his time; especially as he treats so expressly of that metal, and its being employed for ornaments, and speaks of gold threads and embroidering with gold. Vopiscus, however, seems to afford us an indubitable proof that silver thread was not known in the time of the emperor Aurelian[1252 - Vita Aureliani, cap. 46.]. This author informs us that the emperor was desirous of entirely abolishing the use of gold for gilding and weaving, because, though there was more gold than silver, the former had become scarcer, as a great deal of it was lost by being applied to the above purposes, whereas every thing that was silver continued so[1253 - A doubt however arises respecting this proof. It is possible that the author here speaks of gilt silver; for, as the ancients were not acquainted with the art of separating these metals, their gold was entirely lost when they melted the silver. I remember no passage in ancient authors where mention is made of weaving or embroidering with threads of silver gilt.]; but it has been fully proved by Salmasius that silver threads were interwoven in cloth in the time of the last Greek emperors[1254 - Salmas. ad Vopisc. p. 394; et ad Tertull. de Pallio, p. 208. Such cloth at those periods was called συρματινὸν, συρματηρὸν, drap d’argent.].

The period when attempts were first made to draw into threads metal cut or beat into small slips, by forcing them through holes in a steel plate placed perpendicularly on a table, I cannot determine. In the time of Charlemagne this process was not known in Italy; for however unintelligible may be the directions given in Muratori[1255 - Antiquitat. Ital. Medii Ævi, ii. p. 374.], “de fila aurea facere, de petalis auri et argenti,” we learn from them that these articles were formed only by the hammer. It is extremely probable that the first experiments in wire-drawing were made upon the most ductile metals, and that the drawing of brass and iron to wire is of later date. It is likewise certain that the metal was at first drawn by the hand of the workman; in the same manner as wire is drawn by our pin-makers when they are desirous of rendering it finer. They wind it off from one cylinder upon another, by which means it is forced through the holes of the drawing-iron; and this process agrees perfectly with the description of Vanuccio[1256 - Pyrotechnia, lib. ix.] and Garzoni[1257 - La Piazza Universale, Ven. 1610, 4to.], as well as with the figures in the German translation of the latter.