A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins (Vol. 1&2). Johann Beckmann

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СКАЧАТЬ Russia, and even Constantinople. About sixteen hundred are brought every year to England; where the dealers in them, notwithstanding the considerable expense they are at, and after carrying them about on their backs, perhaps a hundred miles, sell them for five shillings apiece. This trade, hitherto neglected, is now carried on in Schwarzwalde; and at present there is a citizen here at Göttingen, who takes with him every year to England several Canary birds and bullfinches (Loxia pyrrhula), with the produce of which he purchases such small wares as he has occasion for.

The principal food of these birds is the Canary seed, which, as is commonly affirmed, and not improbably, was first brought, for this purpose, from the Canary Islands to Spain, and thence dispersed all over Europe. Most of the old botanists, however, are of opinion that the plant which produces it is the same as that called Phalaris by Dioscorides63. Should this be true, it will follow that this kind of grass must have grown wild in other places besides the island it takes its name from; which is not improbable. But those who read the different descriptions which the ancients have given of Phalaris, will, in my opinion, observe that they may be equally applied to more plants; and Pliny seems to have used this name for more than one species of grass64.

      However this may be, it is certain that this seed, when it was used as food for these birds, began to be cultivated first in Spain, and afterwards in the southern parts of France. At present it is cultivated in various parts, and forms no inconsiderable branch of trade, particularly in the island of Sicily, where the plant is called Scagliuola, or Scaghiola. The seed is sold principally to the French and the Genoese. In England, the industrious inhabitants of the Isle of Thanet, particularly those around Margate and Sandwich, gain considerably by this article, as they can easily transport it to London by water.

      That this plant might be cultivated with little trouble in Germany, is shown by the yearly experience of those who raise it in their gardens, and by its having become so naturalized in some parts of Hesse, that it propagates by seed of itself in the fields. The use of the seed might also be extended, for it yields a good meal; but the grains are not easily freed from the husks.

I shall here take occasion to remark, that Savary65 has been guilty of an error, when he says that archil is cultivated in the Canary Islands in order to be sold as food for Canary birds. One may easily perceive that this mistake has arisen from his confounding that lichen used for dyeing with this kind of grass; and I should not have considered it worth notice, had it not been copied into Ludovici’s Dictionary of Trade, from which, perhaps, it may be copied into the works of others.

      FOOTNOTES

58 Gesneri Historiæ Animalium, liber tertius. Tiguri, 1555, fol. p. 234.

59 Uccelliera, overo Discorso della natura di diversi Uccelli. Roma, 1622, 4to.

60 Gesneri redivivi, aucti et emendati, tomus ii. Franc. 1669, fol. p. 62. More information respecting hybrids may be found in Brisson, Ornithologie, t. iii. p. 187; and Frisch, Vorstellung der Vögel in Teutschland, the twelfth plate of which contains several good figures.

61 Coleri Œconomia ruralis et domestica. Franc. 1680, folio.

62 Barrington’s paper in the Phil. Trans. vol. lxiii. p. 249.

63 Phalaris Canariensis. The best figure and description of it are to be found in Schreber’s Beschreibung der Gräser, ii. p. 83, tab. x. 2.

64 Lib. iii. c. 159, and lib. xxvii. c. 12.

65 Dictionnaire de Commerce, t. v. 1765, fol. p. 1149.

      ARCHIL.

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Under the names Orseille, Orceille, Orsolle, Ursolle, Orcheil, Orchel, in Italian Oricello66, Orcella, Roccella, in Dutch Orchillie, and in English Archil, Canary weed or Orchilla weed, is understood a lichen used for dyeing, and from which a kind of paint is also prepared. This species of lichen, of which the best figure and a full description may be seen in Dillenius67, is by Linnæus called Lichen roccella. It is found in abundance in some of the islands near the African coast, particularly in the Canaries, and in several of the islands in the Archipelago. It grows upright, partly in single partly in double stems, which are about two inches in height. When it is old these stems are crowned with a button, sometimes round and sometimes of a flat form, which Tournefort very properly compares to the excrescences on the arms of the Sepia. Its colour is sometimes a light, and sometimes a dark gray. Of this lichen with lime, urine, ammoniacal salts, or a solution of ammonia prepared by distillation, is formed a dark red paste, which in commerce has the same name, and which is much used in dyeing. That well-known substance called litmus is also made of it.

Theophrastus68, Dioscorides69, and their transcriber Pliny70, give the name of Phycos thalassion or pontion to a plant which, notwithstanding its name, is not a sea-weed but a lichen, as it grew on the rocks of different islands, and particularly on those of Crete or Candia. It had in their time been long used for dyeing wool, and the colour it gave when fresh was so beautiful, that it excelled the ancient purple, which was not red, as many suppose, but violet. Pliny tells us, that with this lichen dyers gave the ground or first tint to those cloths which they intended to dye with the costly purple. At least I so understand, with Hardouin and others, the words conchyliis substernitur, which the French dyers express by the phrase donner le pied.

Though several kinds of lichen produce a similar red dye, I agree in opinion with Dillenius, that Phycos thalassion is our archil; for at present no species is known which communicates so excellent a colour, and which corresponds so nearly with the description of Theophrastus. Besides, it is still collected in the Grecian islands, and it appears that it has been used there since the earliest ages71.

Tournefort72 found this lichen in the island Amorgos, which lies on the eastern side of Naxos, and which at present is called Morgo. In his time it was sent to England and Alexandria, at the rate of ten rix-dollars per hundred weight; and he says expressly that it was common in the other islands. He shows from Suidas, Julius Pollux73, and other ancient writers, that this island was once celebrated for a kind of red linen cloth, which in commerce had the name of the island; and he conjectures, not without probability, that it might have been dyed with this lichen.

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