150 HISTORICAL NOTES ON 



vated in early days for its blue dye, has now been generally 

 replaced by the importation of indigo, excepting some partial use 

 as a fouudation for the darker colours. It was well known to the 

 ancients, for its use for dyeing wool is spoken of as habitual by 

 Dioscorides, Vitruvius, Pliny, and Galen ; and the ancient 

 Britons, according to Ctesar, and the Dacians and Sarmatians, 

 according to Pomponius Mela and Pliny, were in the habit of 

 colouring their bodies with it. Ancient authors distinguished the 

 wild and the cultivated woad, but the former was probably some 

 very different plant, and they, perhaps, only knew the real one 

 in a state of cultivation. It was certainly grown in Spain before 

 the twelfth century, and extensively so in Tuscany during the 

 floui'ishing times of the wool-trade, in the thirteenth and four- 

 teenth centuries, and up to the sixteenth. After that, however, 

 it gradually diminished, as indigo came to be imported from 

 America. To stop this decay, protective regulations prohibiting 

 the importation of indigo were enacted in the Eoman states in 

 1652, but they had but little success in the encouragement of the 

 woad-growers ; even Napoleon's continental system gave them but 

 a short temporary stimulus, and they have now quite disappeared 

 from central Italy. As a wild plant the woad has an extensive 

 range over Europe and the temperate parts of Asia, but in the 

 former continent it is probably only really indigenous in the 

 southern and eastern districts. In England, at least, it is only to 

 be found wild where it has escaped from cultivation. 



Madder (Kubia tinctoria), furnishing the well-known beautiful 

 scarlet dye, is another among the earliest cultivated for tinctorial 

 purposes. Two sorts were known in the days of Dioscorides, and 

 are still distinguished by botanists, but whether they be really 

 species or races which have acquired a certain degree of perma- 

 nency by long cultivation remains to be ascertained. The one, 

 the cultivated Ptubia tinctoria, with a thick succulent intensely 

 coloured root, and annual stems and leaves, is said to be of 

 Eastern origin, and is only found in Europe where escaped from 

 cultivation ; the other, the Eubia peregrina, is common in a wild 

 state in the south of Europe. Its leaves and stems are of longer 

 duration, and the root is much smaller and paler coloui'ed, but is 

 occasionally collected for the dyer even in the present day. In 

 Tuscany, the cultivation of the more valuable Tl. tinctoria has 

 been frequently attempted, but generally abandoned as not suffi- 

 ciently profitable, owing either to unfavourable local circumstances, 

 or to bad management, the dyer importing it from the Levant at 



