116 FOOTNOTES FROM 



remote parts of Scotland, skilled in the medicinal and 

 dyeing properties of the various plants that grow around 

 her humble home, still prefers the dyes she herself pre- 

 pares, by simply boiling in water heather twigs, birch 

 leaves, roots of the ruadh or yellow bed-straw, or the 

 various species of crotal or lichens, to logwood, madder, 

 indigo, copperas, or any other of the imported dyes of 

 the shops; and the results she produces, by a skilful com- 

 bination of these simple substances, are really astonish- 

 ing ; many of the stuffs which have undergone her primi- 

 tive dyeing process, being as brilliant and lasting in 

 colour as those which have been subjected to the various 

 baths of the professed dyer. 



* FIG. 16. LECANORA TARTAREA. 



The most useful and best known of our native dye- 

 lichens is the rock-moss or cudbear, Fig. 16 (Lecanora 

 tartarea), so called after a Mr. Cuthbert who first brought 

 it into use. It grows in the form of a tartareous granu- 

 lar crust, of a dirty-grey colour, spreading in indefinite 

 patches over the surfaces of mountain rocks, and often 

 enveloping the stems and leaves of mosses and other 

 small plants. It varies in thickness from a scarce per- 

 ceptible film to a solid mass an inch in diameter, is 

 covered with large irregular shields of a pale flesh colour, 



