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

1148

Kunkels Glasmacher-Kunst. Nurnb. 1743, 4to, p. 368. J. J. Marxens Neu vermehrte Materialkammer.

1149

Volkmann, Silesia Subterranea. Leipzig, 1720, 4to, p. 52.

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.

“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.”

1174

Beschreibung von Allerley Insekten. Berl. 1736, 4to, vol. v. p. 10.

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.

1176

See Krunitz’s Encyclopedie, xliv. p. 2.

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.

1178

In Dioscoridem, iv. 39.

1179

De subtilitate; exercit. 325, § 13.

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].

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?

1182

Raynal, Histoire des Indes. Gen. 1780, 4 vols. ii. p. 77.

1183

Algemeine Geschichte der Länder und Völker von Amerika, Halle 1753, 2 vols. 4to, ii. p. 7.

1184

See Anderson’s Hist. Commerce, iv. p. 73. It is possible however that Guicciardini may have meant Spanish kermes.

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.]

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.

1187

Miller’s Gardener’s Dictionary.

1188

Traité de la culture du nopal et de l’éducation de la cochenille. Au Cap-Francois 1787, 8vo.

1189

In Vita Aureliani, cap. 29.

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.

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.

1192

Antiquit. Celt. p. 69, 70.

1193

Spaten (Stiler) der Teutschen Sprache Stammbaum, 1691, 4to, p. 1062.

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.

1195

Dillon’s Travels through Spain, 1780, p. 21. Rod. Toletanus De Rebus Hispan. lib. vii. 1.

1196

G. J. Vossius De Vitiis Sermonis.

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.”

1198

In Statutis Cluniacensibus, cap. 18.

1199

See Porner’s Anleitung zur Farbekunst. Leipzig, 1785, 8vo, p. 16.

1200

Page 113.

1201

Monconys mentions in his Travels, p. 408, Dr. Keiffer, a son-in-law of Drebbel, who was a good chemist.

1202

In Borrichii Dissertat. ii. p. 104: Color Kufflerianus.

1203

Rabelais, xi. 22. Menage, Diction. Etymol. i. p. 682.

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.

1205

Suite de Teinturier parfait. Paris, 1716.