Through buds and bark into the blackened core
Their eager way. A feeble race! Yet oft
The sacred sons of vengeance, on whose course
Corrosive famine waits, and kills the year.
Coccidæ—Shield-lice.
The Kermes-dye, or scarlet, made from the Coccus ilicis of Linnæus, an insect found chiefly on a species of oak, the Quercus ilex, in the Levant, France, Spain, and other parts of the world, was known in the East in the earliest ages, even before the time of Moses, and was a discovery of the Phœnicians in Palestine, who also first employed the murex and buccinum for the purpose of dyeing.
Tola or Thola was the ancient Phœnician name for this insect and dye, which was used by the Hebrews, and even by the Syrians; for it is employed by the Syrian translator.[898] Among the Jews, after their captivity, the Aramæan zehori was more common. This dye was known also to the Egyptians in the time of Moses; and it is most probable that the color mentioned in Exodus[899] as one of the three which were prescribed for the curtains of the tabernacle, and for the “holy garments” of Aaron, and which the English translators have rendered by the word scarlet (not the color now so called, which was not known in James the First’s reign when the Bible was translated), was no other than the blood-red color dyed from the Coccus ilicis.
The Arabs received the name Kermes or Alkermes for the insect and dye, from Armenia and Persia, where the insect was indigenous, and had long been known; and that name banished the old name in the East, as the name scarlet has in the West. For the first part of this assertion we must believe the Arabs. The Kermes, however, were not indigenous to Arabia, as the Arabs appear to have no name for them. To the Greeks this dye was known under the
name of Coccus, as appears from Dioscorides, and other Greek writers.[900]
From the epithets kermes and coccus, and that of vermiculus or vermiculum, given to the Kermes in the middle ages, when they were ascertained to be insects, have sprung the Latin coccineus, the French carmesin, carmine, cramoisi and vermeil, the Italian chermisi, cremisino, and chermesino, and our crimson and vermilion.