COCCID^— SHIELD- LICE. 259 



For oft, engendered by the hazy north, 

 Myriads on myriads insect armies warp, 

 Keen in the poison'd breeze, and wasteful eat 

 Through buds and bark into the blackened core 

 Their eager way. A feeble race ! Yet oft 

 The sacred sons of vengeance, on whose course 

 Corrosive famine waits, and kills the year. 



Coccidae — Shield-lice. 



The Kermes-dye, or scarlet, made from the Coccus ilicis 

 of Linngeus, an insect found chiefly on a species of oak, the 

 Quercus ilex, in the Levant, France, Spain, and other parts 

 of the world, was known in the East in the earliest ages, 

 even before the time of Moses, and was a discovery of the 

 Phoenicians in Palestine, who also first employed the murex 

 and buccinum for the purpose of dyeing. 



Tola or Thola was the ancient Plioenician name for this 

 insect and dye, which was used by the Hebrews, and even 

 by the Syrians; for it is employed by the Syrian translator.^ 

 Among the Jews, after their captivity, the Aramaean zehori 

 was more common. This dye was known also to the Egyp- 

 tians in the time of Moses; and it is most probable that the 

 color mentioned in Exodus- as one of the three which were 

 prescribed for the curtains of the tabernacle, and for the 

 ''holy garments" of Aaron, and which the English transla- 

 tors have rendered by the word scarlet (not the color now 

 so called, which was not known in James the First's reign 

 when the Bible was translated), was no other than the blood- 

 red color dyed from the Coccus ilicis. 



The Arabs received the name Kermes or Alkermes for 

 the insect and dye, from Armenia and Persia, where the 

 insect was indigenous, and had long been known ; and that 

 name banished the old name in the East, as the name scarlet 

 has in the West. For the first part of this assertion we 

 must believe the Arabs. The Kermes, however, were not 

 indigenous to Arabia, as the Arabs appear to have no name 

 for them. To the Greeks this dye was known under the 



1 Isaiah, ch. i. v. 18. 



2 Ex. ch. xxvi. xxviii. xxix. 



