2 nd S. IX. June 23. '60.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



477 



LONDON, SATURDAY, JUNE 23. 18C0. 



N«. 234. — CONTESTS. 



NOTES:— Vermilion, 477 — Technical Memory applied to 

 the Bible, 4S0 — Holland in 1625, 481. 



Minor Notes : — Character of St. Paul's Handwriting, Ga- 

 latians vi. 11 — A curious Jewish Custom — Mary Queen 

 of Scots' Missal — Postage Stamps, 482. 



QUERIES : — Full-bottomed Wigs, 483 — Law Officers — 

 Lines on a Pieeon — " Investigator " — " Most Reverend," 

 and " Right Reverend " — General Breezo — Children with 

 Beards— "Miss in her Teens" — "Whistle Tankards — 

 Helen Home of Ninewells — Earldom of Moray — Armo- 

 rial Bearings— Chair at Canterbury — Portrait of Charles, 

 Sixth Lord Baltimore — Knighthood conferred by the 

 Lords Justices of Ireland, 483. 



Queries with Answers: — "Case for the Spectacles"— 

 Henpecked — Morice or Morrice Family — Sterne — Ed- 

 ward Chamberlayne,- LL.D. — Sorrel and Sir John Fen- 

 wick— Thomas Fuller, M.D. — Bath Family — Married by 

 the Hangman, 485. 



REPLIES :— Temples : Churches, why so called? 4S7 — 

 Burning of the Jesuitical Books, 488 — The Label in He- 

 raldry, 489 — Balk, and Pightel or Pikle: Ventilate, lb.— 

 Dutch Tragedy, 491 — Wright of Plowland — A Father's 

 Justice — Urchin — Henry King — March Hares— Mil- 

 ton's Sonnet to Henry Lawcs — Plough — Publication of 

 Banns — Male and Female Swans — " End " — The Psalter 

 of the Blessed Virgin — Mrs. Dugald Stewart — Passage in 

 Menander— An Essay of Afflictions — Laystall — Britain 

 1116 B.C. — Coldharbour: Coal — Irish Celebrities: Gari- 

 baldi, &c. — "Vant," Derivation of — Pope and Hogarth 

 — Martha Gunn — Muswell, Clerkenwell — Poor Belle — 

 Kippen — Eyelin, 491. 



Notes on Books. 



Sates. 



VERMILION. 



There is something unsatisfactory and obscure 

 in the derivations commonly assigned to the word 

 vermilion. English lexicographers are content to 

 trace it to " vermiculus, a little worm" : assigning 

 as a reason that " the colour is derived from a 

 worm" (see Worcester's Did., in verb.). Mis- 

 led by this false theory as to the origin of the 

 substance, Dr. Johnson (who abstains from offer- 

 ing any derivation for the word itself) identifies 

 " vermilion" with cochineal, which he calls "the 

 grub of a plant;" but, apparently doubtful of his 

 own accuracy, he assigns as a second meaning 

 that which is in reality the true one, namely, that 

 vermilion is "factitious or native cinnabar; sulphur 

 mixed with mercury." "This," he adds, "is the 

 usual but not the primitive signification." All 

 the great modern dictionaries, however — Italian, 

 Spanish, and French, concur in the same ex- 

 planation, and refer to " vermicuhis'' as the root 

 of the word " vermilion." 



The anomaly of this etymology arises from the 

 fact that vermilion being a bisulphuret of mer- 

 cury, is entirely distinct from the dye obtained 

 Scorn the coccus or from the cochineal insect, and 

 has therefore nothing in common with any "worm" 

 whatever. 



To make this objection more clear, it must be 

 borne in mind that the ancients had two descrip- 

 tions of red : one, the transparent tint produced 

 from the coccus, an insect which attaches itself to 

 the oak, and from which the Greeks and Romans 

 extracted the dye applied to cloth ; the other, the 

 opaque earthy and mineral pigments with which 

 they painted their woodwork and walls. The 

 substance known to us as vermilion belongs to 

 the latter class. 



As to the first, it is perhaps unnecessary to pre- 

 mise that it is an error to designate the coccus as 

 " a worm." The word literally means a " grain " 

 or "berry;" and was applied by the Greeks to 

 the insect itself, which in no one of its stages 

 bears any resemblance to a worm. This sug- 

 gests the conjecture whether the word vermes or 

 vermicuhis may not have been used to designate 

 any "creeping thing" by the Romans, just as Shak- 

 speare and Milton call the serpent a worm, and 

 we still apply the same term to the caterpillar of 

 the silk-moth. The error, however, prevailed be- 

 fore the age of Pliny, who found it necessary to 

 explain that the coccus was called vermicuhis be- 

 cause, as he says, " est genus in Attica fere et 

 Asia nascens, celerrime in vermictdum se rraitans 

 quod ideo vkwX^kiov (vermiculum) vocant"(b.xxiv. 

 c. 4.) All the modern Latin lexicographers, from 

 Isidorus of Seville, in the seventh century, to 

 Facciolati, repeat the same story. Stephanus says 

 that what the Greeks call k6kkos, " nos rubrum 

 seu vermiculum dicimus : est enim vermiculus ex 

 silvestribus frondibus." 



The error as to the insect was afterwards ex- 

 tended to the colour which it yields, and vermi- 

 culus in Latin came to signify the bright red tint 

 known to the Greeks as k6kkivqs. Stephanus ap- 

 pears to have had some doubt whether this was 

 not a modern misapplication : " quih recentiore 

 setate dictum sit dubitare nos non sinunt Gallo- 

 rum vermeil et vermilion Hispanorumque bermejo 

 et bermellon." But Gesner establishes its anti- 

 quity by a reference to Columella, who speaks of 

 " red grapes " as uvce vermiculce, and applies the 

 same term to " red wheat." 



In the second class of opaque reds, the pigment 

 first known to the ancients was red-ochre ; earth 

 tinged with a peroxide of iron, which was called 

 /xIKtos by the Greeks, and sinopis by the Romans, 

 from its being found at Sinope in Pontus. With 

 this they decorated their galleys ; whence Homer 

 designates the ships of Ulysses as tiihTo-napriot 

 (ib. ii. 637.), and Herodotus says all ships were 

 smeared with it, fii\T7)\oi<pt€s (b. iii. 58.). Hero- 

 dotus also describes two tribes of Libyans who 

 coloured their bodies with /j.(\tos (b. iv. c. 191. 

 194.) ; and iElian incidentally mentions that the 

 practice prevailed in some parts of India of ting- 

 ing the eyes with it (b. xviii. c. 25.). 



Pliny attests that this earthy red, "rubrica" 



