FOOTNOTES
[615] Dioscor. lib. v. cap. 107, p. 366. Περὶ Ἰνδικοῦ.
[616] Plin. lib. xxxv. cap. 6, § 27, p. 688; and Isidorus, Origin. lib. xix. cap. 7, p. 464.
[617] Foesii Œconomia Hippocratis. Francof. 1588, fol. p. 281.
[618] Ἔγχυλον means also juicy, or something that has a taste. Neither of these significations is applicable here, where the subject relates to a substance which is dry and insipid, or at any rate which can possess only a small degree of astringency. It must in this place denote an inspissated or dried juice; but I can find no other passage to support this meaning.
[619] In Pliny’s time people coloured a white earth with indigo, or only with woad, vitrum, in the same manner as coarse lakes and crayons are made at present, and sold it for indigo. One of them he calls annularia, and this was one of the sealing earths, of which I have already spoken in the [first volume]. In my opinion it is the same white pigment which Pliny immediately after calls annulare: “Annulare quod vocant, candidum est, quo muliebres picturæ illuminantur.” These words I find nowhere explained, and therefore I shall hazard a conjecture. Pliny, I think, meant to say that “this was the beautiful white with which the ladies painted or ornamented themselves.”
[620] Plin. lib. xxxv. § 12, p. 684.—Vitruv. lib. vii. cap. 14.
[621] Tavernier, ii. p. 112. We are told so in Malta Vetus et Nova a Burchardo Niederstedt adornata. Helmest. 1659, fol. lib. iv. cap. 6, a work inserted in Grævii Thesaurus Ital. vi. p. 3007. This man brought home with him to Germany, after his travels, a great many Persian manuscripts, which were purchased for the king’s library at Berlin. Niederstedt, however, is not the only person who speaks of indigo being cultivated in Malta. Bartholin, Epist. Med. cent. i. ep. 53, p. 224, says the same.
[622] It is entirely different from the molybdate of tin, the laborious preparation of which is described by J. B. Richter in his Chemie, part ii. p. 97.
[623] It deserves to be remarked, that the Greek dyers, speaking of a fermenting dye-pan covered with scum, used to say, like our dyers, that it had its flower, ἐπάνθισμον. In Hippocrates the words ἐπάνθισμα ἀφρῶδες denote a scum which arises on the surface. Among the Latins flos in this sense is very common.