DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FRORI INSECTS. 319 



imported mixed in about equal proportions, and are then 

 called galls in sorts. If no substitute equal to galls as 

 a constituent part of ink has been discovered, the same 

 may be said of these productions as one of the most 

 important of our dyeing materials constantly employed 

 in dyeing black. It is true that this colour may be com- 

 municated without galls, but not at once so cheaply and 

 effectually, as is found by their continued large consump- 

 tion notwithstanding all the improvements in the art of 

 dyeing. Other dyeing drugs are afforded by insects, the 

 principal of which are Chermes, the Scarlet Grain of Po- 

 land^ CocJiineal, Lac-lakc, and Lac-dye, all of which are 

 furnished by different species of Coccus. 



The first of these, the Coccus Ilicis, found abundantly 

 upon a small species of evergreen oak (Querctts coccifera) 

 common in the south of France, and many other parts 

 of the world, has been employed to impart a blood 

 red or crimson dye to cloth from the earliest ages, and 

 was known to the Phoenicians before the time of Moses 

 under the name of Tola or T/iola (yVin), to the Greeks 

 luider that of Coccus (A'ojcxo;), and to the Arabians and 

 Persians under that of Kermes or Alkermes ; whence, as 

 Beckmann has shown, and from the epithet •vcrmicidatum 

 given to it in the middle ages, when it was ascertained 

 to be the produce of a worm, have sprung the Latin coc- 

 cineiis, the French cramoisi and vermeil, and our crimson 

 and vermilion. It was most probably with this substance 

 that the curtains of the tabernacle (Exod. xxvi. &c.) were 

 dyed deep red (which the word scarlet, as our transla- 

 tors have rendered 'JtJ' npVin, then implied, not the colour 

 now so called, which was not known in James the First's 

 reign when the Bible was translated) — it was with this 



