The Dyers Vat. 85 



however, is a piece of judge-made law, not easily 

 reducible to any fixed principle. 



In those days Robertson had not learned to value 

 marine objects as treasures of natural history, nor did 

 his various employments leave him much leisure for 

 that pursuit. Still, even then it had its attractions 

 for him. The first glow-worm, Lampyris noctihica, 

 that he had ever seen, he obtained at Millport. It 

 was a great prize to him. He had many a night's 

 hunt for more specimens of it. They were by no 

 means common. Few of the natives had ever either 

 seen them or heard of their existence in the island. 

 He was much interested about the source of the light, 

 finding that it proceeded from a part of the body on 

 the underside of the abdomen, which the insect turned 

 up when it showed the light. 



The branches of science, however, to which his 

 attention at this time was more especially directed 

 were anatomy and chemistry. The various processes 

 which the dyer makes use of could scarcely fail to 

 interest so observant a mind in chemistry, and if the 

 readers of this biography were likely to be in any 

 great proportion dyers and renovators, there would 

 be some satisfaction in quoting from the five hundred 

 and fifty notes and recipes in his common-place book, 

 which testify to the close connection between the trade 

 and the science. But analyses of indigo and cochineal, 

 the description of madder, its uses, and the mode of 

 preparing it, or even the simple directions for dressing 

 silk and satin ribbons and restoring crape, would here 

 be out of place. The technical details for changing 

 a Prussian-blue jacket to brown, and a dark claret silk 



