Benefits, 259 



fluid excreted by tliem, however beautiful, agrees with the 

 the true Purpura in no circumstances except in colour. 



Poets as well as naturalists have lauded, you well know, 

 the beauty and permanency of this dye, perhaps the principal 

 commodity of Tyre, when its " merchants were princes, and 

 its traffickers the honourable of the earth." It was discovered 

 1400, or, at the utmost, 1500, years before the Christian era, 

 but from its scarcity, as much as from its brilliancy, was al- 

 ways very costly, and in consequence reserved for dyeing the 

 hangings of temples, or the robes of priests and kings. Plu- 

 tarch in his Life of Alexander, relates, that, among other 

 valuables in the treasury at Susa, that conqueror found 5000 

 talents of it, which was perfectly fresh, though nearly two 

 hundred years old ; and its preservation was ascribed to its 

 being covered with honey. " Pliny informs us that it was used 

 by Romulus, and the succeeding kings of Rome, as well as 

 by the consuls and first magistrates under the republic. The 

 Roman emperors at last appropriated it entirely to their own 

 use, and denounced the punishment of death against those 

 who should dare to wear it, though covered with another 

 colour. This absurd and tyrannical restriction confined the 

 dyeing of the Tyrian purple to a few individuals ; and in a 

 short time the knowledge of the process was completely lost. 

 In the twelfth century, neither the shellfish which furnished 

 the dye, nor the methods which the ancients employed to 

 communicate to cloths the rich and beautiful purple which it 

 affijrded, were at all known.'* 



In 1 6 1 6, Fabius Columna, a Neapolitan nobleman, wrote a 

 dissertation on the Purpura. It does not appear, however, 

 that he had ever attempted to procure the colour ; his object 

 was rather to give a history of a forgotten art. But, in the 

 year 1683, Mr. William Cole of Bristol made some experi- 

 ments on the subject, being excited to do so by a report he 

 had heard of a person living at a seaport in Ireland, who had 

 made considerable gain by marking with a delicate durable 

 crimson colour the fine linen of ladies and gentlemen, sent to 

 him for that purpose ; and that this colour was made by some 

 liquid substance taken out of shellfish. He soon discovered 

 that our common Purpura lapillus was the shellfish ; and, as 

 mentioned by Aristotle, he found the colouring matter " in a 

 white vein, lying transversely in a little furrow or cleft next 

 to the head of the fish." After an interval of twenty-four 

 years, the same colour was procured from the same species of 

 shell by Jussieu and Reaumur; and afterwards, in 1736, by 

 Duhamel ; and, when we compare the accounts of these emi- 

 nent naturalists with those of Aristotle and Pliny, no doubt 



