Hartley — On the Illuminations of the Book of KelU. 487 



of great value and remarkable interest which has just been published, 

 Les Origines cle rAlcldmie. The information given by Dr. Thomas 

 Thomson is derived from the writings of Pliny, Yitruvius, and 

 Dioscorides, he likewise quotes from Sir Humphrey Davy's Paper. 

 M. Berthelot quotes largely from manuscripts and papyri preserved 

 in the National Library at Paris, the Greek manuscript in the 

 Library at St. Mark's, Yenice, and the papyrus in the Museum at 

 Leyden. According to Thomson, Pliny describes two kinds of 

 colours, namely, the florid and the austere. The names of the 

 florid colours were, minium, armenium, cinnabaris, chrysocolla, 

 purpurissimum, and indicum purpurissimum. The austere colours 

 were of two kinds, the native and the artificial. The native were 

 known as sinopis, rubrica, pareetonium, melinum, eretria, auripig- 

 mentum. The artificial were, ochra, cerussa usta, sandaracha, 

 sandyx, syricum, and atramentum. The Greek manuscript from 

 the Library of St. Mark is the earliest work on alchemy extant ; 

 it dates from the tenth or eleventh century, but the information it 

 contains is derived from much earlier Egyptian sources. In de- 

 scribing the colours mentioned above, it will be convenient to 

 quote occasionally from Thomson's work, and to give the original 

 Greek names which appear in the fac-simile representations of 

 pages of the manuscripts quoted in M. Berthelot's work. 



Placing the Natural Colours first, we have the follow- 

 ing : — 



Reds. 



Cinnabar. KtwajSojOtc (St. Mark MS.), Kiwa^apei (Leyden 

 MS.), mercury sulphide, the most abundant ore of mercury. It 

 was called minium ; and red lead, an artificial colour, was also 

 known by the same name. The modern pigment vermillion should 

 correspond to this. 



Armenium, a yellow ochre or orange colour. Sinopis. StvwTrtKij, 

 also 2ivw7rtc' TrovrtKij (St. Mark MS.), a red substance now known 

 as Yenetian red, or raddle. It is used for sheep-marking, and in 

 parts of England for reddening the brick floors of cottages. It 

 was procured from Pontus in the Balearic Isles, and it was doubt- 

 less an iron ore with more or less combined water. 



Ochre. QxP" (St- Mark MS.). "Ochre is merely sinopis 

 heated in a covered vessel." " Rubrica, from the name, was pro- 



