310 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. 



Balducci Pegolotti. At that time indigo was im- 

 ported in leather bags and in chests in the same 

 manner as at present. Although for more than two 

 thousand years its value had been recognised in Asia, 

 still its use was either prohibited or restrained for a 

 considerable period in different European countries, 

 under the erroneous belief that its colour was fugitive. 

 About the sixteenth century improvements in the 

 art of dyeing were attempted in several European 

 countries. Among the many new methods employed 

 some gave greater brilliancy, others greater per- 

 manency to the colours. Some, however, though 

 they might impose on the eye, gave but an evanes- 

 cent beauty of tint; while others subjected the stuffs 

 to pernicious chemical preparations whereby their 

 texture was injured and they were found " to rot oti 

 the shelves of the shopkeeper." Governments were 

 in consequence induced to interfere by legislative 

 enactments, to prevent their subjects from being 

 imposed upon by " these false and pernicious dyes ;" 

 and prohibited at once the Use of all the new mate- 

 rials which produced only fleeting shades, and which 

 contained, or were supposed to contain, any thing 

 detrimental to the stuff under preparation. Now 

 these governments to their mistaken views of do- 

 mestic policy united an equally profound ignorance 

 of chemistry, and listening to the reports of the unin- 

 formed or interested, sometimes laid under one pro- 

 hibitory ban the useful as well as the hurtful. In 

 Germany a decree of the Diet, held in 1577, prohibited 

 under the severest penalties u the newly invented, 

 pernicious, deceitful, eating, and corrosive dye called 

 the devil's dye, for which vitriol and other eating sub- 

 stances were used instead of woad." 



In the middle of the next century the use of indigo 

 was found to interfere with the cultivation and sale 

 of woad, which had hitherto formed a considerable 



