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CHAPTER IV.

COLOURING MATTERS OF VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL ORIGIN.

MADDER AND OTHER RUBIACE.®.

F all the dye-materials in general use none exceeds in importance

madder, which has become the basis of almost all our dyes.” These words,written in 1828 by Daniel Kcechlin-Schouch, are scarcely out of date even atthe present day. Madder owes its importance to the beauty and fastness ofthe tints it yields, and to the fadt that by a simple variation of the mordantsused it produces red, rose-pink, black, violet, lilac, and puce colours. Thoughalizarin, the chief colouring matter of madder, is now produced artificially inlarge quantities, madder will long remain in request, especially for woollendyeing. 1000 tons of coal should theoretically yield 1 ton of alizarin ; inpradtice the amount obtained does not exceed one-half of this estimate. Thefuture of artificial alizarin depends on an increased supply of anthracen.

Madder, garance (Fr.), meekrapp (Dutch), krapp (Germ.), robbia (Ital.),is the ground root of a plant known to botanists as Rubia tinctorum.It is originally a native of Central Asia and the table-lands of the Caucasus.This root has been cultivated from a remote antiquity,—so remote, indeed,that it is very difficult to say where its true habitat may be. Its cultivation inthe neighbourhood of Smyrna, Adrianople, the Isle of Cyprus, and some partsof the present kingdom of Greece, is mentioned by ancient historians. Dios-corides and Pliny state that madder was used by the Egyptians, Persians, andIndians. The ancient Greeks and Romans were acquainted with this plantunder the names of Erythrodanon and Rubia. About the time of the Crusadesthe cultivation of madder was re-introduced into the more western parts ofEurope, especially into Italy, and perhaps into France. In some parts ofSpain it was grown by those enterprising agriculturists, the Moors, andtowards the middle of the sixteenth century it found its way into that portionof the Netherlands known as Zealand. Charles Gaint caused it to be culti-vated in Alsace, and Colbert introduced it into the Comtat d’Avignon in 1666.In the city of Avignon the general tradition is that a certain Armenian, namedJoseph Althen, a native of Yulfa, a suburb of Ispahan, introduced the cultureof madder into the Comtat and the neighbouring principality of Orange, aboutthe years 1762 to 1774. A statue has been eredted at Avignon in his honour,and was inaugurated on the day that his only daughter died in an hospital.The cultivation of madder in Alsace (late Departements du Haut et Bas Rhin)is locally attributed to M. Franke, of Haguenau (1760). In our days madderis cultivated, to a greater or less extent, in Italy, Roumania and other parts ofTurkey, the States of Barbary (Tunis, Morocco), various parts of Germany