128 CONCHOLOGIST’S COMPANION. 
Vitruvius often adopted with the larger. The liquor, 
when extracted, was mixed with a considerable por- 
tion of salt, and suffered to remain three days; after 
which it was diluted with five or six times its quantity 
of water, and digested, in a moderate warmth, during © 
ten days, in a leaden or tin vessel, being frequently 
skimmed for the purpose of removing all impurities, 
The wool having been previously well washed, 
cleansed, and prepared, was then immersed in the 
fluid; after soaking five hours, it was taken out, 
carded, and again returned to the boiling dye, till all 
the colour was completely absorbed. To produce 
particular tints, nitre, and a marine plant, called 
fucus, brought from the rocks of Crete, were occa- 
sionally added. 
The Tyrians, by the confessions of all antiquity, 
succeeded best in dyeing purple stuffs. Their process 
slightly differed from the one narrated by Pliny, as 
they merely used such purple shells as abounded on 
the shores of the Mediterranean, and made a bath of 
the liquor extracted from the fishes. In this they 
steeped the wool for a certain time, then took it out, 
and threw it into another boiler, which contained 
an extract from the Buccinum or Trumpet-fish only; 
and hence the wool which had been submitted 
to this double process, was so highly estimated, that 
in the reign of Augustus, each pound sold for one 
