has been fufpected that the TIN which they fo abundantly imported from the Caffiterides, or British ifles, was made ufeful in their famous purple, and that they greatly exalted and fixed the colour by folutions of that metal in the dying materials.* What was really known to the Romans concerning the mode of dying the Tyrian purple has been very minutely detailed by Pliny, who informs us, that after having procured from the MUREX, or purple-fifh, a quantity of the colour fufficient for the purpose, they mixed it with falt, in which condition it remained during three days. To eight gallons of water they then added one hundred and fifty pounds of colour, which they boiled over a gentle fire, fkimming the furface of the liquor from time to time, and occafionally dipping in it a lock of wool to mark the progress to maturity of the materia tinctoria. In about five hours it became perfectly clear, bright, and fit for use. The prepared wool was then steeped in the dye five hours; it was then taken out, dried, carded, and again See Pryce's Mineralogia Cornubienfis, p. 17. + Plinii Nat. Hift. lib. ix. cap. 38. foaked foaked in the vat; and, being once more dried, was delivered to the manufacturer to be spun and wrought into cloth. This was the celebrated Abaga, or double-dyed Tyrian purple, a pound of which, we are informed by the fame author, was valued, in Rome, at a thousand denarii, or upwards of thirty-two pounds of our money.* Whether the Tyrians, however, were or were not accuftomed to ufe folutions of the metals for this purpose, it has been obferved by a good judge in these matters, as a thing extremely probable at least, that the Indians of the prefent day, to impart the fine, bright, and durable colours to their calicoes and chintzes, make use of metalline folutions, fince fome of those stained calicoes having been kept for forty or fifty years, the bright colours have been observed to eat out the cloth, exactly in the fame manner as the corrofive acid fpirits, which diffolve metals, are found to do; and hence he concludes that it would be attaining to a high excellence if European artists, in painting and ftaining, could prepare the finest colours without employing Plinii, Nat. Hift. lib. ix. cap. 39. A a 4 either either acid or alkaline falts, which are generally apt to prey upon the cloth, or other fubftance, ftained with them.* But, leaving the region of ingenious conjecture, we come, in the second place, to confider the ftill more curious manufacture of SILK by the Indian mechanic, a manufacture for which they were as immemorially famous as for their admirable Sindon. The little animal, the BOMBYX, that produces this delicate thread, is fcarcely lefs a wonder in the world of natural history than its production formerly was in the commercial world. The body of this infect, a fpecies of the phalana, is composed of a great number of elaftic annuli, closely united or rather interwoven with one another, and its heart, or rather a series of numerous hearts connected together, extends the whole length of its body. The beating of this chain of hearts, or rather, to speak more philofophically, the motion of fyftole and diastole, may be very diftinctly perceived; and to obferve the manner in which the vital fluid passes from one to the other forms a very curious and in * Dictionary of Trade and Commerce; article Calico. teresting teresting spectacle. They were doubtless intended to accelerate the circulation of the fluids through the body. In the cavities of the belly, adjoining to the ventricle, the microscope discovers an infinite number of small veffels, forming a long bag or canal, in which is deposited the glutinous liquid whence the filk is formed, and these veffels communicating by a thousand winding meanders with the mouth, the little creature is enabled thereby to collect together and discharge at pleasure their contained fluids, which are hardened by the air into that delicate fort of fi bre of which the web or ball confifts. This little ball is the last effort of the expiring infect, whose short period, at least in that state of its existence, is a year, and it is fabricated at the expense of its being, as a worm; for, having formed its nidus, it becomes metamorphosed into an aurelia, and continues in that ftate without any figns of life or motion, till in a few days, if not deftroyed, as they generally are to prevent the ball being injured, it becomes a butterfly, and makes its way out of its filken fepulchre, in which it lay as it were interred, into fields of æther. These balls, when taken from the mulberry-trees from which they are fufpended, are generally of the fize of a pigeon's egg, are of a yellow colour, of an admirable conftruction, and are faid to be composed of threads fpun out, by the labour of the indefatigable architect, of many hundred yards in length. Having thus defcribed the curious animal from which this valuable article of Eastern commerce is produced, we come to the confideration of the commodity itself, the mode of its fabrication by the Indian artist, and other interefting matters connected with its history. Silk derives its Latin name of SERICUM, from the Seres, a nation of northern Afia, by whom were doubtlefs intended the Chinese; but of the hiftory of the commodity itself, or of the people who manufactured it, the Romans feem to have been alike ignorant. Some of them confidered it as the white down growing on the leaves of a certain Eaftern tree; while others thought that it was produced from the entrails of a kind of spider, which they denominated SER; but all had very confufed notions relative to its origin and fabrication. The small quantity of filk then produced by Serica was probably brought by |