454 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN INDUSTRIES 



SINCE COLUMBUS. 



VII. THE EVOLUTION OF THE WOOLEN MANUFACTURE (concluded). 



By S. N. DEXTER NORTH. 



TT7E shall dwell but 



V V briefly upon the 

 dyeing and finish- 

 ing branches of 

 the wool manu- 

 facture. In dye- 

 ing, the ancients 

 attained a degree 

 of perfection so 

 remarkable as to 

 recall the saying 

 of the prophet 

 that there is no 

 new thing under 

 the sun. They 

 discovered and 

 utilized vegetable 

 and animal dyes 

 of blue, purple, 

 and scarlet, so 

 brilliant and so 

 delicate that, with 

 all our knowledge 

 and experience, we are not able to surpass them. The chief 

 advance in this department of the manufacture has been in the 

 greater ease with which dyeing is effected, and the consequent re- 

 duction in its cost, and in the increased number of tints and 

 shades which can be imparted to the material. The art of dyeing 

 appears to have been contemporaneous with the arts of spinning 

 and weaving. Where these flourished, there the dyer always left 

 behind him the evidences of his skill ; when these languished and 

 decayed, dyeing became one of the lost arts. The ancient Tyrians 

 attained their celebrity as the most skillful dyers of antiquity by 

 their use of the liquid of the shell-fish buccinum and purpura, 

 while the early explorers of this continent were astonished at the 

 brilliancy of the dyes which the Mexicans and the Peruvians ex- 

 tracted from forest trees. In the Peruvian department at the 

 Philadelphia Exhibition there was exhibited a piece of woven 

 cloth, taken from the tomb of the Incas, which had retained, for 



Fig. 26. A Greek Spinner of To-day. 



