[ 4°5 ]

informed, is never followed by our dyers, who look uponbrown as a colour opposite to black, and therefore veryunfit to serve as a ground for it. Whether a brownground is useful or otherwise I cannot take upon me ab-solutely to determine ; but thus much I can affirm, thatI have known brown stuffs dyed to a black, which wasreckoned, by good judges, to look, and to hold its colourin wearing, remarkably well. It should seem that anydeep colour, which does not hurt the cloth, would bepreferable to white; and it may here be proper to observe,that all colours whatever receive a black dye, thoughblack will not receive any other; whence black, as alreadymentioned, is the last resource for cloths that have beendamaged or had their colour stained or impaired by diffe-rent accidents.

6. The excellent regulations for the French dyers,drawn up and publiffied by the order of Mr. Colbert,require the cloth, after it has been blued, to be maddered.In order to fix the colour of madder, the cloth must befirst boiled with alum and tartar; and as these salts mustnecessarily contribute to augment the ill qualities thatwere supposed to result from the black dye itself, andwhich were endeavoured as much as possible to be avoid-ed, it might be thought that the madder was accompaniedwith some considerable advantage, sufficient to counter-balance that inconvenience and the addition which itmakes to the expence. It has not been found however,on fair trials, to contribute any thing either to the beautyor duration of the black. Mr. Hellot relates, that have-ing dyed a piece of cloth of a deep blue, he madderedone of the halfs, and then dyed both the maddered andunmaddered halfs black in one copper: both turned outof a good black, but the unmaddered, he fays, was plainlythe best, the maddered piece having somewhat of a rusty

Ggg 2 hue.