150 
several roots, fruits or barks of this country would produce 
the most elegant colours. 
America supplies Europe with several articles used for- 
dying, and possesses many others kept secret by the In¬ 
dians or used by private families for their own good. I 
have collected all the information I could on these native 
dyes, and thinking that the friends of science must be libe¬ 
ral, and that concealment and philosophy ought to be as far 
distant as the arctic pole is from the antarctic, I shall offer 
here the result of my remarks on a great variety of vegeta¬ 
ble colours which I have tried, and I shall conclude these 
notes by a description of the method used in France to make 
the solution of tin, and to procure with the assistance of that 
invaluable mordant the best and most durable scarlet, dark 
blues and black. 
List of native .vegetable substances which contain colouring 
firincifilesy and the mordant which will best set them. 
Vegetables *. Colours . Mordant . 
Poplar, 
Yellow, 
Alum and soda. 
Apple trees,. 
do. 
Locust, 
do. 
do. 
Persimmon, 
Crimson, 
do. 
Oak trees. 
Steel colour. 
Copperas. 
Nut trees, 
Olive, 
do. 
Maples, 
Purple, 
do. 
Sassafras, 
Red, 
do. 
Madder, 
do. 
do. 
Stone fruit trees, ^ 
Cinnamon and nan¬ 
keen colour, 
| Alum and soda. 
Sumac, hazel nut \ 
and alders, j 
Black, 
Copperas. 
Woad, 
Blue, 
Solution of tic. 
False Indigo,. 
do. 
dp. 
Several fruits yield also very handsome colours, with 
proper mordants. The berries of the Pokeweed or Pigeon 
berry (Phytolacca) give an elegant red equal to the Cochi¬ 
neal. The blue Huckleberry or Whortleberry (Vaccimum)' 
