234 ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS 



is of the highest antiquity in the East, having been used 

 by the ancient Egyptians, but it was not introduced 

 into Europe till the sixteenth century, where for a 

 considerable time it encountered much opposition on 

 account of its interference with the growth and manufacture 

 of indigenous Woad. Almost indisputably, although it 

 has become nearly extinct, Isatis is a British plant, for 

 did not the school books of our childhood, on no less an 

 authority than that of Csesar, tell us that the ancient 

 Britons stained their bodies blue with a plant called Woad ? 

 How they did so, is still to some extent a matter of 

 speculation, because there is not the faintest trace of blue 

 in any part of the plant at any stage of its growth — 

 but I shall revert to this later on. The Britons, then, 

 used Woad, but the earliest allusion to the plant as an 

 article of commerce in this countr}^ is in the year 1243. 

 By the fifteenth century it was being imported in large 

 quantities, references to the sale of it frequently occurring 

 in old English documents. In the sixteenth century, 

 Thuringia, a province of Saxony, appears to have been the 

 chief Woad-producing district of Europe. In our own land, 

 in the reign of Elizabeth, we find Woad a " protected " 

 article, a law having been passed to render the use of 

 East Indian Indigo illegal ; and by the eighteenth century, 

 the culture and preparation of Woad were explained by 

 leading writers on agriculture. At that period it was 

 grown in many parts of England and Scotland ; but 

 by the nineteenth century its culture seems to have been 

 confined to a few places in the Fen country. At the 

 present time those places are four only, namel}^ Algarkirk, 

 Wyberton, Skirkbeck, and Parson Drove near Wisbech. 

 Happening to be in Cambridge in May last on a visit 

 to our esteemed ex-President, Mr Arthur H. Evans, 

 who resides there, I determined to avail myself of the 

 opportunity of seeing with my own eyes, and finding 

 out all I could about Woad, or "ivad" as I soon learned 

 I must call it if I wished to be understood on the 



