SCIENCE IN THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD 



that is taken in selecting the water is applied to all 

 the other substances used. For it has been demon- 

 strated many times that herein lies the secret of making 

 fine carmine pigment; whereas it was supposed for 

 many years that some special and obscure process was 

 necessary. 



Carmine, besides being the most brilliant and beauti- 

 ful red color known, has the advantage over most of 

 the other reds of being non-poisonous. It can be used 

 for coloring foods, and is used extensively in tinting 

 confectionery and various preserved fruits. 



Practically the only drawback to the use of carmine 

 in almost every field where bright colors of the paler 

 tints of red are used, is its cost. It has never been 

 possible, even in the vast territories of the tropics where 

 the little cochineal insects flourish, to produce them in 

 sufficient quantity to supply the demand for their color- 

 ing-matter. Consequently the price of carmine has 

 always been very high. But all this is now changing. 

 The pale workers of the laboratory have found a means 

 of doing what the bronzed men of the fields could never 

 accomplish. They have found a way of supplying un- 

 limited quantities of an artificial carmine, made from 

 coal-tar, at a mere fraction of the cost of the older 

 product a synthetic carmine, quite as good as the nat- 

 ural pigment. So after centuries of useful bondage in 

 the service of savage and civilized man, the little Mexican 

 insect seems to be serving the last years of its usefulness, 

 and will very shortly be allowed to run the course of its 

 natural life like other more fortunate tropical insects. A 

 few more years must pass before the artificial carmine 



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