302 KEPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. [8] 



identical with the famous old East Indian method of fixing a fast red on 

 cotton by means of madder (or its equivalent) and an oil mordant: I 

 mean the color known to the English as Turkey-red, and to the French 

 as rouge cV Andrinople. The East Indian process, as described by the 

 earlier investigators, is as follows : 



" For dyeing cotton, the Hindoos prepare an imperfect soap from oil, 

 ashes, and animal matters. More precisely, they soak the skeins in a 

 soapy liquor made with goat dung, oil (of stated kinds), and potash lye, 

 obtained by leaching the ashes of certain plants ; then they expose the 

 cotton to sun and air for several days, and finally dye it with chay 

 root (equivalent to madder), without applying previously to the cotton 

 any alum or acid or saline matter."^ 



To my own mind, the verisimilitude, or, so to say, the chemical rea- 

 sonableness, of the story as related to me by the New Brunswick fisher- 

 man lent strength to it, and I would have been glad to have found re- 

 corded evidence to support it, but as has been seen already, I have 

 practically failed to do so. It is to be noticed, meanwhile, that the soft 

 soap employed by the New Brunswickers would naturally be of home 

 manufacture and incompletely finished. It would be likely to contain 

 of itself much of the emulsion of oil and alkali so useful in Turkey-red 

 dyeing. The probabilities are strong withal that the soap is made from 

 a more or less rancid fish-oil such as Pallas ^ found in use among the 

 Armenian dyers of Turkey-red at Astrachan, and such as in more 

 recent times has been approved an efQcient agent by the Turkey-red 

 dyers of Manchester. 



In case it should turn out to be true that sails and nets are any- 

 where colored by means of an oil mordant, it will be of special interest 

 to ascertain how long the process has been in use in the locality, and 

 whence it came thither. It seejns highly improbable that the method 

 should have been copied either in America or Great Britain from the 

 Turkey-red dyers, for it is only in recent times, comparatively speaking, 

 that the process of dyeing Turkey-red has been practised by the West- 

 ern nations. It was not until the middle of the eighteenth century that 

 it v/as successfully employed in France.^ Mention is made of it as 

 being emi)loyed in 17G5 in Great Britain, and it is admitted that the 

 art has been successfully practiced there since 1785.* The details of 

 the Turkey-red process, as imported to civilized Europe, were so tedious 

 and complicated, and the scientific explanation of them was so little 

 understood, that there is bnrdly the least likelihood that any feature 

 of the process could have been transmitted by professional dyers to 

 European and American fishermen or housewives in recent times. The 

 very crudeness of the domestic processes above-mentioned would of it- 



1 Mazeas, Memoires des Savana dtraugfers, 1763, 4, 15-18. 



2 Cited by Berthollet, Elcaieus de I'Art de la Teiuture, 2, 161. 



3 Ure, Diet. Arts, 2, 90. 



*McPher8on'8 Auuals of Commerce, 3, 433, and 4, 95. 



