USES OF LAC. 139 



best kinds of sealing wax, and is also used in 

 the hat manufacture. 



With regard to its use as a dyeing drug we find 

 the following remarks in the Entomology of Kirby 

 and Spence. " It has been employed to impart a 

 blood red or crimson dye to cloth from the earliest 

 ages, and was known to the Phoenicians before the 

 time of Moses, under the name of Tola or Thola, to 

 the Greeks under that of Coccus, and to the Ara- 

 bians and Persians under that of Kermes or 

 Alkermes ; whence, as Beckmann has shown, and 

 from the epithet vermiculatum given to it in the 

 middle ages, when it was ascertained to be the pro- 

 duce of a worm, have sprung up the Latin coccineus, 

 the French cramoisi and vermeil, and our crimson 

 and vermilion. It was most probably with this 

 substance that the curtains of the tabernacle 

 (Exodus xxvi.) were dyed deep red, (which the 

 word scarlet, as our translators have rendered it, 

 then implied, not the colour now so called, which 

 was not known in James the First's reign, when 

 the Bible was translated ;) it was with this that 

 the Grecians and Romans produced their crimson; 



