322 
regularly and extensively cultivated, as these plants furnish dyes of. a 
purity and depth of colour that de efy i imitation. And there appears no 
ur c 
e Toad for lac far exceeds the supply, and in this product 
ee holds the market. ae rto the lac of commerce has been drawn 
m wild sources, but there is nothing to show that the insect might 
aa E regularly sut dotipeleaien. 
INDIGO. 
As tea may be said to have been the immediate cause of the separa- 
tion of Aineriea from Great — so e go may be regarded as the 
cause of the collapse of the once famous maritime power of Portugal. 
When we first read of India sea indigs, it went by the C 
» Guif and Alexandria to ot where it was known as 
Indigo. In the fifteenth century the new route to India was ea» 
articles they trafficked in indigo, and s spite of the 
oppositi d perseeution of the woad cultivators of Europe, in 
making that tinctorial reagent a necessity t European dye-works, 
especially in Holland. At that time and even down to the seventeenth 
century the English manufacturers sent their broadcloths to be d 
the Dutch. Diffie ulties, however, arose through the absurdly high 
charges made by the Portuguese for the indigo which they brought to 
Europe, and through which traffic, very largely, they were enabled 
establish ae position of the chief shipping agency (so to speak 
the Oriental trade. For nearly a century Lisbon rivalled even p 
as a depôt t for Eastern produce, but the skill of the Aden ie stopped 
ener of utilising in home industries the materials which their maritime 
enterprise brought to their shores. In quarrelling, therelore, with 
their chief consumers, c direetly led to the formation in 1631 of the 
Dutch East India Com , by whom enough indigo was soon brought 
to Holland to suffice for the. whole of Europe. 
It may be said that some doubt still exists as to whether or not the 
indigo plant can botanically be called indigenous to India. Several 
very nearly allied species ave the “ wild indigo” of numerous writers. 
It is certainly significant that the Sanskrit name z/4 (or the modern 
nil, ve was €: carried tothe countries supplied as the name of the 
new dye. This might be viewed as pointing to the specific apoio 
of nila to this orai blue dye (out of the many other plants known 
. in India to yield a similar product) as of comparatively modern date. 
Further, the industry would appear to have originated on the western 
side of India (Guzerat and Sind being its home)—a region where its 
cultivation is quite unknown at the ‘present day, but where the dye 
still bears the name gali (= ? decoction), a name which is used by all 
the earliest European writers. The Persian and African influence 
especially: in dyeing and weaving) are even now and aed for centuries 
so strong on the western side of India as, moreover, to give 
vetas to the idea of the cultivation and sn oS of indigo 
ving very possibly been introduced by them. This might account 
for its rapidly spreading to other and better-suited regions. Indeed, it 
