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

1150

Pomet.

1151

Brande’s Dictionary of Science, &c.

1152

[The powder spread out by the female insect just before laying the eggs.]

1153

[Stephens in his Catalogue of British Insects enumerates no less than thirty species as inhabitants of these islands.]

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.

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.]

1156

Plin. Hist. Nat. lib. ix. cap. 41; lib. xvi. cap. 8; lib. xxii. cap. 2; lib. xxiv. cap. 4.

1157

Bochart. Hierozoicon, vol. ii. lib. iv. cap. 27, p. 624.

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.

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.

1160

Bellonii Itin. i. 17. – Tournefort, Voy. du Levant, i. p. 19.

1161

Bellon. ii. 88. – Roger, Voyage de la Terre Sainte, i. 2. – Voyages de Monconys, i. p. 179. – Brown’s Travels in Africa, &c.

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.

1163

Cap. 311, p. 210.

1164

These writers propose to read ἐν τῷ θέρει instead of τῷ στόματι; but the variation here is too great to be admitted.

1165

Garidel, p. 254.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

1171

Salmasius in Solinum, p. 854.

1172

Histoire Naturelle de Languedoc. Par. 1737, 4to, p. 472.

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.