238 On the Economical Uses of some species of Testacea. 
The shells inhabit all the shores of the Mediterranean, but the 
best were procured at Tyre, the island of Meninx, the coasts of 
Getulia and Laconica, and the island of Coa in the A.gean Sea.* 
The real Murex was fished for and caught with small and delicate 
nets ; a bait was put in them, consisting of cockles or other bivalves, 
viliieh had been so long kept out of water, that on being thrown in 
again they gaped widely. The Murex attacked them as food, and 
was drawn up with them. The other species were found adhering 
to rocks, on mud banks, &c. The season for catching them was in 
the spring, when the dye was the deepest and best. It is contained 
.in a small white vein, which lies in the neck of the fish, and in its 
natural state is a thin and almost colorless liquor. The shell was 
carefully broken off, and as the dye loses its value when the fish is 
dead, they were obliged to cut it out alive. The veins were then 
laid in salt, and left to settle for three days; after which the whole 
was boiled for ten days more, and the fleshy parts skimmed off as 
they rose to the surface, till the whole liquid was clear, bright and 
red. The longer it was boiled, the deeper of course the color be- 
came. After this, the wool, well scoured, was steeped i in it for some 
hours, then cleaned and carded, and put in again, to remain till it 
could absorb no more. Nitre was employed in fixing the color. The 
hue of the Tyrian dye was of a very deep red, soft and shining ; 
the color of a rose, but approaching to black, or like a very deep 
shade of the color now called Jake ; of course the word purple as at 
present understood, conveys a wrong impression. When the smaller 
and inferior species were used, the process was the same, with the 
exception of their being crushed in the shell, instead of the vein be- 
ing cut fromthem. The two were occasionally mixed to produce @ 
variety of shade, according to the fashion.+ No mention is made o 
linen being so dyed, and it seems to have been confined to woolen 
fabrics, and perhaps, as some think, to cotton. A writer in the Phi- 
ical Transactions of the Royal Society of London,{ Anno 
1684, mentions a person at Minhead, on the coast of Ireland, who 
made i it his business to mark linen with the liquor from shells. From 
—————— cnet 
* Plin, Hist. Nat. and Juvenal Sat. ut supra 
+ This appears to be the dibaphos and Listsetes of the Latin writers, and which 
does not imply that the wool had been twice dyed in the same liquor to produce 4 
shade, 188 ‘some suppose, but that it was s of an entirel different hue. Pliny 
says such was th 
+ Trans. of the Royal Society, abr’d. vol. ii. : 
