t 429 ]

with more of the ingredients but in less quantity than atfirst.

This process affords a very good black oq woollen ar\4silk stuffs as west as on hats, as we may fee in the smallpieces of both kinds which are sometimes dyed by thehatters.. The workmen lay great stress upon the verde-gris, and affirm that they cannot dye a hat black withoutit: it were to be wished that the use of this ingredientwas more common in the other branches of the blackdye; for the hatters dye, both on silk and woollen, isreckoned a finer black, than what is commonly producedby the woollen or the silk dyer.

sect. X.

Of the dying of linen and cotton black.,

' jT’' H E black vitriolic dye, though very durable onJL the substances hitherto mentioned, is perishable onlinen and cotton. Pieces of linen and cotton cloth, andIkains of thread, boiled first with galls, and afterwardsinfused and dipt repeatedly in a decoction of logwoodwith vitriol, received a good black colour; but both thebrownish stain which the galls communicate, and theblackness superinduced by the vitriol, were in great mea-sure discharged by washing with soap ; even the rustycolour, which the vitriol of iron gives by itself, seeming,in this way of application, to be less fixed than if it hadbeen employed without the galls. Steeping the linen fora month, previous to the dye, with galls, and with oakhark, by which method fishing nets receive from theastringents a pretty durable stain, was here of no service,.the black dye proving equally perishable.

The dyers of thread follow a process somewhat differentfrom the above. They first steep. the thread in alum

K k k 2 water