450 
pliny's natural histoey. 
[Book IX. 
been pointed out to luxury, in thus making one colour carry 
another, and thereby become, as they say, softer and more 
mellow. And what is even more than this, human ingenuity 
has even learned to mingle with these dyes the productions of 
the earth, and to steep in Tyrian purple fabrics already dyed 
crimson with the berry of the kermes, in order to produce the 
hysginian^* tint. The kermes of Galatia, a red berry which 
we shall mention when we come to speak of the productions 
of the earth, is the most esteemed, of all, except, perhaps, the 
one that grows in the vicinity of Emerita,^^ in Lusitania. 
However, to make an end, onc-e for all, of my description of 
these precious dyes, I shall remark, that the colour yielded by 
this grain^"^ when a year old, is of a pallid hue, and that if it is 
more than four years old, it is quicldy discharged : hence we 
find that its energies are not developed either when it is too 
3^oung or when old. 
I have now abundantly treated of an art, by means of which 
men, just as much as women, have an idea that their appearance 
may be set off to the greatest possible advantage. 
CHAP. 66. (42.) THE PII^lS^A, AND THE PINNOTHEKES. 
Belonging to the shell-fish tribe there is the pinna also : 
it is found in slimy spots, always lying uprighi, and never 
From the Greek txryivog, after the herb hysge, which was used in 
dyeing. J udging from the present passage, it would almost appear to have 
been the colour now known as puce. See B. xxi. c. 36 and c. 97 ; and B. 
5XXV. c. 26. 
15 See B. xvi. c. 8, and B. xxiv. c. 4. 
16 See B. iv. c. 35. 
This is in reality the Coccus ilicis of Lirmseus, a small insect of the 
genus Coccus, the female of which, when impregnated, fastens itself to a 
tree from which they derive nourishment, and assumes the appearance of a 
small grain : on wliich account they were long taken for the seeds of the 
tree, and were hence called grains of kermes. They are used as a red and 
scarlet dye, but are very inferior to cochineal, which has almost entirely 
superseded the use of the kermes. The colour is of a deep red, and will 
stand better than that of cochineal, and is less liable to stain. 
IS Or pina. The Pinna marina, Cuvier says, is a large bivalve shell-fish, 
which is remarkable for its fine silky hair, by means of which it fastens 
itself to the bottom of the sea. 
1^ The poet Oppian, Halieut. B. ii. 1. 186, relates the same story about 
the pinna and its protector ; which is also mentioned by Cicero, Plutarch, 
and Aristotle. 
