The Penny Cyclopædia...: Fustic

The Penny Cyclopædia of The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
Volume XI.
Fuego, Tierra Del - Haddingtonshire.
London: Charles Knight and Co., 22, Ludgate Street.
MDCCCXXXVIII.
1838
FUSTIC. This name appears to be derived from fustet, the French name of a yellow dye-wood, the produce of Venetian sumach. A wood similar in colour and uses, but larger in size, having been subsequently imported from the New World, had he same name applied to it with the addition of old, while the other, being smaller, is called young fustic; but these, so far from being the produce of the same tree at different ages, do not even belong to the same genus.

Young Fustic; or as it is sometimes called, Zante Pustic, is the produce of Rhus Cotinus (tribe Anacardiacece), a native of Italy, the south of France, and of Greece; much of it is exported from Patras in the Morea; and it also extends into Asia. It is supposed to be the Cotinus of Pliny, being still called Scotino near Valcimara, in the Apennines, where it is cultivated on account of its uses in tanning. The root and the wood of this shrub are both imported, deprived of their bark, and. employed for dyeing a yellow colour approaching to orange, upon wool or cottons, prepared either with alum or the nitro-muriate of tin with the addition of tartar. The colour is a beautiful bright yellow, and permanent when proper mordaunts are employed. Only small quantities of this kind of fustic are imported.

Dr. Sibthorp was of opinion that [---] infectoria or oleoides, of which the berries are called French and Persian berries, yielded the fustic of commerce, and informs us that its yellow wood is called by the Greeks chrysoxylon. He also thought that it was the Lycium of Dioscorides, but this has been shown by Dr. Royle to be a species of Berberis, of which genus all the species have yellow wood.

Old Fustice, the 'bois jaune' of the French, is on the contrary the produce of a large tree, Morus tinctoria, dyer's mulberry, of the natural family of Urticeæ, a native of Tropical America and the West India Islands. The tree attains a height of 60 feet ; the wood is yellow coloured, hard, and strong, but easily splintered, and is imported in the form of large logs or blocks. The yeltow colour which it affords with an aluminous base, though durable, is not very bright. M. Chaptal discovered that glue, by precipitating its tannin, enabled its decoctions to dye yellow almost as bright as those of weld and quercitron bark. The fustic from Cuba is preferred, and fetches the highest price, varying from 10l. to 12l., while that from Jamaica or Columbia aries from 8l. to 9l. a ton. The tree is figured by Sloane, and noticed by Marcgrave and Piso. Browne describes it as a native of Jamaica, and deserving the attention of planters, as it is only propagated by birds, who are fond of its sweet roundish fruit.

Fustic is admitted into England at the nominal duty of three shillings per ton from British Possessions, and our shillings and six-pence from other countries. The annual import for each of the ten years, ending with 1836, was - 1827, 4111 tons; 1828, 7597; 1829, 7364; 1830, 5111; 1831, 6334; 1832, 4350; 1833, 9851; 1834, 14,047; 1835, 9930; 1836, 4917.

The several countries from which fustic was imported. and the respective quantities received from each, were, in 1836-
Italy and the Italian Islands 4 tons
Ionian Islands 72 tons
Morea and Greek Islands 18 tons
 British North American colonies 103 tons
British West Indies 2053 tons
 United States of America 226 tons
Mexico 172 tons
Columbia 1913 tons
Brazil  356 tons
Total 4917 tons.