238 On the Economical Uses of some species of Testacea. 



The shells inhabit all the shores of the Mediterranean, but the 

 best were procured at Tyre, the island of Meninx, the coasts of 

 Getulia and Laconica, and the island of Coa in the ^gean Sea.* 

 The real Murex was fished for and caught with small and delicate 

 nets ; a bait was put in them, consisting of cockles or other bivalves, 

 which had been so long kept out of water, that on being thrown in 

 again they gaped widely. The Murex attacked thenn as food, and 

 was drawn up with them. The other species were found adhering 

 to rocks, on mud banks, he. The season for catching them was in 

 the spring, when the dye was the deepest and best. It is contained 

 in a small white vein, which lies in the neck of the fish, and in its 

 natural state is a thin and almost colorless liquor. The shell was 

 carefully broken off, and as the dye loses its value when the fish is 

 dead, they were obliged to cut it out alive. The veins were then 

 laid in salt, and left to settle for three days ; after which the whole 

 was boiled for ten days more, and the fleshy parts skimmed off as 

 they rose to the surface, till the whole liquid was clear, bright and 

 red. The longer it was boiled, the deeper of course the color be- 

 came. After this, the wool, well scoured, was steeped in it for some 

 hours, then cleaned and carded, and put in again, to remain till it 

 could absorb no more. Nitre was employed in fixing the color. The 

 hue of the Tyrian dye was of a very deep red, soft and shining ; 

 the color of a rose, but approaching to black, or like a very deep 

 shade of the color now called Jake ; of course the word purple as at 

 present understood, conveys a wrong impression. When the smaller 

 and inferior species were used, the process was the same, with the 

 exception of their being crushed in the shell, instead of the vein be- 

 ing cut from them. The two were occasionally mixed to produce a 

 variety of shade, according to the fashion.f No mention is made of 

 linen being so dyed, and it seems to have been confined to woolen 

 fabrics, and perhaps, as some think, to cotton. A writer in the Phi- 

 losophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London,^ Anno 

 1684, mentions a person at Minhead, on the coast of Ireland, who 

 made it his business to mark linen with the liquor from shells. From 



* Plin. Hist. Nat. and Juvenal Sat. ut supra. 



t This appears to be the dibaphos and bistinctus of the Latin writers, and which 

 does not imply that the wool had been twice dyed in the same liquor to produce a 

 deeper shade, as some suppose, but that it was of an entirely different hue. Pliny 

 says such was the most fashionable and the most expensive. 



t Trans, of the Royal Society, abr'd. vol. ii. 



