WRITING INK. 
233 
may obtain an ink of no despicable quality in other respects, 
and with the advantage of being much less liable to decay by 
age, than the ink now in common use 
But though the Greeks and Romans, in Pliny’s time, were The ferrugi- 
acquainted with no better writing ink than that which I have gradually 0 ioto 
just mentioned, the knowledge they had acquired of the colour use. 
resulting from a combination of gall nuts, &c. with iron, would 
naturally lead them to employ the black so produced, as ink ; 
and probably after doing so, they would find motives to induce 
them gradually to adopt its , use ; as, indeed, they appear to 
have done, though I cannot discover from Caneparius, who 
has written a volume on the subject, any evidence of the time 
when this substitution began. We may, however, infer from 
Sir Charles Blagden’s communication to the Royal Society, 
(in the Phil. Trans, for 1787) that in the 9th century those who 
made it their business to copy manuscripts, used ink composed 
from iron and galls, though, probably the use of it was not so 
general, as wholly to preclude that of lamp Hack or soot in this 
way*. I shall, indeed, presently mention a composition of Indestructible 
my own for ink, of which lamp black is a principal ingre- ink * 
dient, and which may probably cause the latter to be hereafter 
employed in a similar way j at least for purposes which may 
require a most durable and almost indestructible ink. * Of the Account of 
writing inks most generally used in the beginning of the 17th cane- 
century, when the Work of Caneparius was printed at Venice, parius, 
he gives an account between pages 170 and 179 j and they ap- 
* That the use of lamp black in making ink was not wholly laid 
aside when Caneparius wrote, appears by the receipt which he has 
given at p. 176 ; fora portable ink, to consist of one pound of honey, 
the yolks of two eggs, half an ounce of gum arable in powder, as 
much lamp black as would render the mixture sufficiently black. 
These were to be well beaten, and mixed in a mortar, so as to make an 
uniform and solid mass ; of which, when wanted, a little was to be 
dissolved in water. Even at this time, the Boors at the Cape of Good 
Hope are said, I think, by Mr. Barrow, to write with soot and brown 
sugar mixed in water ; and I have often seen such ink employed by 
farmers in North America. 
Vol.XXXV.— N o. 164. R pear 
