PAINTS, DYES, AND VARNISHES 



market. Most of them are mixtures, but their exact 

 compositions are trade secrets, and need not be consid- 

 ered here. 



THE PIGMENTS OF ANTIQUITY 



"When Noah built the ark," says a writer, "and 

 coated the seams with pitch, he was doubtless following 

 the most approved system in use of protective coatings 

 on structural materials, which was then probably of 

 remote antiquity and traditional origin, and which he 

 may have learned when he was a boy four or five hun- 

 dred years before." 



It appears, then, that the use of some sort of protec- 

 tive in the form of paint or varnish dates back to a very 

 remote period of antiquity, not necessarily on the state- 

 ment of the Mosaic writers alone, but from existing 

 evidences that antedate them by many centuries. It is 

 interesting, however, that one of the earliest written ac- 

 counts of boat-building shows that the workmen coated 

 their boats with the same material that is still used for 

 similar purposes the world over. Since it is unlikely that 

 this ideal material should have been hit upon from the 

 very first, it is evident that the use of protectives had 

 passed through a long experimental stage at the very 

 dawn of written history. But even if no word had ever 

 been written about this, we still have the mute evidences 

 in the form of remains from ancient dwellers of the Nile 

 and the Euphrates, showing that paints, varnishes, and 

 dyes were used extensively by them for ornament and 

 decoration as well as for protectives. 



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