The Sources of Beautiful Colors.

The Manufacturer and builder 9, 1889

The American Druggist, its formulating a list of the choicest colors used in the arts, says that the cochineal insects furnish a great many of the very fine colors. Among them are the gorgeous carmine, the crimson, scarlet carmine, and purple lakes. The cuttlefish gives the sepia. It is the inky fluid which the polyp discharges in order to render the water opaque when attacked. Indian yellow comes from the camel. Ivory chips produce the ivory black and bone black. The exquisite Prussian blue is made by fusing horses' hoofs and other refuse animal matter with impure potassium carbonate. This color was discovered accidentally. Various lakes are derived from roots, barks, and gums. Blue-black comes from the charcoal of the vine stalk. Lampblack is soot from certain resinous substances. Turkey red is made from the madder plant which grows in Hindostan. The yellow sap of a tree of Siam produces gamboge; the natives catch the sap in cocoanut shells. Raw sienna is the natural earth from the neighborhood of Sienna, Italy. Raw and burnt umber is also an earth found near Umbria. India ink is made from burnt camphor. The Chinese are the only manufacturers of this ink, and they will not reveal the secret of its manufacture. Mastic is made from the gum of the mastic tree, which grows in the Grecian Archipelago. Bister is the soot of wood ashes. Very little real ultramarine is found in the market. It is obtained from the precious lapis lazuli, and commands a fabulous price. Chinese white is zinc. Scarlet is iodide of mercury, and native vermilion is produced from the quicksilver ore called cinnabar.