408 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1950 



a quantity of these insignificant plants as would realize considerable 

 sums, to the direct advantage of themselves and the shipowners ; and 

 consequently to the advantage of the State." He even compromised 

 the reforms of social revolution with the possibility of financial re- 

 turns, saying that "indirectly, a multiplied trade in dye-lichens might 

 scatter the seeds of civilization, and place the means of a comfortable 

 subsistence at the command of the miserable inhabitants of many a 

 barren island or coast, at present far removed from the great centers 

 of social advancement . . ." 



Blue and red dyes. — An interesting etymological and historical note 

 upon the derivation of the word "Koccella" has been contributed by 

 Woodward (23) . In this is cited early references to archil and orchil 

 in Shakespeare's "Kichard II and III," and it is implied that the 

 Spanish terms orcigilia or orchillia and the Portuguese urzela were 

 probably derived earlier from the Italian. From a privately printed 

 history of the Florentine family Rucellai, Woodward noted a state- 

 ment that the family name was derived from "the art of the lichen 

 dye" ; this was also spelled Oricellai. The Oricellai or Rucellai were 

 dyers in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. About that time one 

 of the family traveling in the Levant succeeded in obtaining technical 

 information on the preparation of the lichen dyes, which made possible 

 the establishment of the industry in Florence and the beginning of a 

 monopoly that persisted until the discovery of the Cape Verde Islands. 

 The botanical term was first used by Linnaeus for Lichen roccella^ 

 which de Candolle adopted for the genus Roccella as it is known today ; 

 the Roccellaceae include lichens furnishing blue and red dyes. The 

 first source of supply in the Levant and Mediterranean countries was 

 controlled by the Rucellai and other merchants of Florence. Discov- 

 ery of new lands broke this monopoly and revealed the abundance of 

 the plants on rocks along warm seacoasts. The trading centers became, 

 successively, Portugal, France, and Holland. De Avellar Brotero (5) 

 of Lisboa wrote in 1824, referring to the dye, that "its uses have been 

 much extended for it serves as pigment to dye wool, silk, cotton, and 

 various other fibers, it serves in paints, to color marble, wines, liqueurs, 

 papers, pills, oil, grease, wax, etc." New sources for the "weed" were 

 found in the Cape Verde Islands, Cape of Good Hope, Angola, East 

 Africa, Mozambique, Madagascar, Zanzibar, Ceylon, the East Indies, 

 Australia, Valparaiso (Chile), Lima (Peru), and the west coast of 

 North America. Shiploads of it were gathered from Lower Cali- 

 fornia and adjacent islands. 



The species which constitute the commercially valuable orseille 

 lichens have been grouped as follows into orseilles of the earth (A) 



