EARLY HISTORY OF. 433 



the first half of the last century, is by some commentators 

 thought to have been known to and made practically 

 available by the Komans. The sandy x spoken of by 

 Virgil, 1 is supposed to have been our madder, and to have 

 communicated its colour to the wool of the sheep fed on it, 

 which could then be at once manufactured into cloth of a 

 red colour without the necessity of submitting it to any 

 subsequent process of dyeing. At the present day we 

 manufacture the wool of our brown and black sheep in 

 its natural colour, and value it more than that dyed 

 artificially; and this was probably also the case with 

 the ancients. Pliny speaks of cloths of this kind as panni 

 nativi coloris, and Martial, in one of his epigrams, 2 also 

 alludes to a dress made of this description of cloth. In 

 the middle ages madder was called varantia, a name pro- 

 bably corrupted from verantia, which implied the true or 

 genuine red dye, as aurantia signified a golden yellow, 

 both of which colours modern science obtains from this 

 same plant. There is but little doubt that madder was 

 grown in this country from a very early period, and that 

 it furnished an article of commercial value to the farmer 

 who grew it, to the merchant or dealer who purchased it, 

 and to the dyer who finally used it for the purposes of his 

 craft the herbaceous part of the plant being valuable 

 also as fodder during the time required for the due 



and he communicated his discovery to the Royal Society in a paper, which was 

 printed in their Transactions." See vol. xxxix., No. 442, p. 287, and No. 443, 

 p. 299; Beckmann's History of Inventions. These curious effects have been the 

 subject of experiments by many physiologists and naturalists, and seem to be 

 confined to the plants possessing colouring principles belonging to, or closely 

 allied with, the same order. The common weed Galium verum (ladies' bed- 

 straw) possesses this property, while neither woad, weld, nor saffron produce 

 any such effect. 



1 "Sponte sua sandyx pascentes vestiet agnos." 



Virgil, Eclog. iv. 45. 



2 " Nor\ est lana mihi mendax, nee mutor aeno 



me mea tinxit ovis." 



Martial, xiv. 133. 

 VOL. II. 61 



