A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins, Volume I (of 2)

KERMES. COCHINEAL

Though a variety of information respecting the history of cochineal and kermes may be found scattered in the works of different authors, I shall venture to lay before the public what I have gathered on the subject; as I flatter myself with the hope of being able to rectify some errors of my predecessors, as well as to supply deficiencies which they have left; and as it will undoubtedly be agreeable to many readers to see collected in one point of view whatever is most important, with the addition of a few explanatory observations and notes.

Cochineal and kermes, as they appear in commerce, are small grains, shaped almost like those small dried grapes without stones, which are called currants. They are sometimes of a deep and sometimes of a fainter reddish-brown, or violet-brown colour, are often covered with a gray dust or mouldiness¹¹⁵², appear full of wrinkles, as succulent bodies generally do when dried, and for the most part are a little more raised on the one side than on the other. When these grains are chewed, they have a somewhat bitterish and astringent taste, and communicate to the spittle a brownish-red colour. They are employed in medicine, but their principal use is in dyeing.

It is now well-known that they belong to that genus of insects called Coccus, and that they are principally the dried impregnated females. Numerous species of these insects have been described by entomologists¹¹⁵³, who have most frequently named them from the plants on which they occur; for the present object, however, it will be sufficient to take notice only of three kinds.

The first is the real American cochineal, or that which at present is most used, but which at the same time is the dearest. By Linnæus it is called Coccus Cacti. The second kind is found chiefly on a species of oak, the Quercus Ilex, in the Levant, Spain, France, and other southern countries, and is therefore called Coccus Ilicis, Coccus arborum, and often also kermes. The third comprehends that saleable cochineal found on the roots of several perennial plants, which is known commonly under the appellation of Polish or German cochineal; though it is not certain whether those insects produced upon the perennial knawel (Scleranthus), bears-breech (Uva-ursi) and other plants, be the same species. They are often distinguished also by the name of Coccus radicum.

That the second species has been mentioned by the ancient Hebrew, Greek, Latin and Arabian writers cannot be denied; and those who know that our information respecting the nature of this commodity, which is perhaps even yet imperfect, has been in modern times procured after much labour and research, will not be surprised to find their accounts mingled with many falsehoods and contradictions. The ancients must have been under more doubt and in greater ignorance on this subject, the less they were acquainted with the propagation of these insects; but we should be too precipitate were we to reject entirely everything they have said that may deviate from the truth; and I think it would be no difficult task to produce writers of the seventeenth and of the eighteenth century, whose information on this point is as dubious and incorrect as that to be found in the writings of the ancients.

All the ancient Greek¹¹⁵⁴ and Latin writers agree that kermes, called by the latter coccum, perhaps also coccus, and often granum, were found upon a low shrubby tree, with prickly leaves, which produced acorns, and belonged to the genus of the oak; and there is no reason to doubt that they mean Coccus Ilicis, and that low evergreen oak, with the prickly leaves of the holly (aquifolium), which is called at present in botany Quercus Ilex¹¹⁵⁵. This assertion appears more entitled to credit, as the ancients assign for the native country of this tree places where it is still indigenous and produces kermes.

According to the account of Dioscorides, kermes were collected in Galatia, Armenia, Asia, Cilicia and Spain. Most commentators suppose that there must be here some error, as that author first mentions Galatia and Armenia, and then Asia in general. Some, therefore, understand by the latter, the city of Asia in Lydia; others have altered or rejected the word altogether; and Serapion, in his Arabic translation, seems to have read Syria. Professor Tychsen, however, assured me that Asia proconsularis is here meant, to which Cilicia did not belong; and in this particular sense the word is often used by writers contemporary with Dioscorides. Of this difficulty Salmasius takes no notice.

We are informed by Pliny¹¹⁵⁶ that kermes were procured from Asia and Africa; from Attica, Galatia, Cilicia, and also from Lusitania and Sardinia; but those produced in the last-mentioned place were of the least value. Pausanias says that they were to be found in Phocis. As the coccus is mentioned likewise by Moses and other Hebrew writers, kermes must have been met with at that period in some of the remote countries of the East¹¹⁵⁷. Bochart has quoted passages from the manuscript works of Arabian authors, which undoubtedly allude also to kermes; and I shall class among these, without any hesitation, the account of Ctesias, which has been copied by Photius, Ælian, and the poet Phile, though in more than one circumstance it deviates from the truth. It has already been considered by Tyson and Delaval as alluding to kermes, or rather the American cochineal, which Tyson, however, seems to confound with the genus of insects Coccinella, in English called the lady-bird¹¹⁵⁸.

That the kermes-oak still grows and produces kermes¹¹⁵⁹ in the Levant, Greece, Palestine, Persia and India, is sufficiently proved by the testimony of modern travellers. Bellon and Tournefort saw kermes collected in the island of Crete or Candia¹¹⁶⁰; the former saw them also between Jerusalem and Damascus¹¹⁶¹; and he informs us that the greater part of them was sent to Venice. That they are indigenous in Persia, is expressly affirmed by Chardin. The kermes of Spain are so well known that it is not necessary to bring proofs of their being a production of that country. Dioscorides says that the Spanish kermes were bad¹¹⁶²; and we are expressly told by Garidel, that they are still of less value than the French.

With the real nature of kermes the ancients were not acquainted. By the greater part they were considered as the proper fruit of the tree; and although they remarked the insects, it was a common opinion that they were produced from putrefaction without propagation; and on this account they did not perceive their real origin. They imagined that the insects were the effects of corruption; and Pliny speaks as if he conceived that certain species were liable to this fault more than others. They were therefore named scolecion, and less valued. But in another passage he calls kermes, not improperly, a scurf or scab of the tree, scabies fruticis. Dioscorides says that the kermes appeared on the tree like lentils, a comparison with which Matthiolus is highly displeased; but it cannot be altogether unnatural, as many of the moderns, who never read the writings of the Greeks, compare them also to lentils or peas. The account, that a kind of kermes in Sicily, like small snails, was collected by the women with their mouths, seems to be attended with more difficulty. The comparison of snails, which may not be altogether inconsistent, I shall admit; but the gathering with the mouth is too much contrary to common sense not to be disputed. Commentators, therefore, have proposed various emendations, which seem to be drawn from the different readings; but the common one alluded to must be very old, as it has been adopted by Serapion in his translation¹¹⁶³. Marcellus and Cornarius are of opinion that a word must be inserted, expressive of the time when the kermes were gathered; and that instead of “with the mouth,” ought to be read “in summer¹¹⁶⁴.” For my part, I think a word signifying some instrument employed by the women in collecting them would be more proper; for the Grecian women, according to Bellon’s account, use still for that purpose a small instrument shaped like a sickle. In France¹¹⁶⁵ and other countries, the women suffer the nails of their fingers to grow, in order that they may assist them in their labour¹¹⁶⁶. However this may be, both Dioscorides and Galen ascribe to kermes an astringent, bitter taste; but I shall leave to the examination of physicians the medicinal qualities for which they have extolled them. I shall remark only, as a technologist, that kermes was used formerly in dyeing purple to give what is called the ground; but our dyers employ it to communicate a scarlet colour, which, without doubt, excels the purple of the ancients.

The first-mentioned use of kermes in dyeing seems to have been continued through every century. In the middle ages, as they are called, we meet with kermes under the name of vermiculus or vermiculum; and on that account cloth dyed with them was called vermiculata. Hence the French word vermeil, and its derivative vermilion, as is well-known, had their extraction; the latter of which originally signified the red dye of kermes, but it is now used for any red paint, and also for finely pounded cinnabar. In France and Spain, at present, kermes, as soon as they are gathered, are besprinkled with vinegar and dried in the sun; but it appears that in the middle ages they were not dried sufficiently, and that they were put into leather bottles to prevent them from making their escape¹¹⁶⁷. In preparing the liquid dye, dyers used Egyptian alum, the only kind then to be had, and also urine¹¹⁶⁸. This dye seems to have been known in Germany so early as the twelfth century; for among the productions of the country which Henry the Lion sent as a present to the Greek emperor we find scarlata¹¹⁶⁹.

Our ancestors, in all probability, procured their kermes from the southern part of France, or rather from Spain. The Arabians, who from the earliest periods had been acquainted with this production in Africa, found it in Spain, and employed it there for dyeing, and as an article of commerce; and on this account, as appears, the Arabic name kermes, or alkermes, became so common¹¹⁷⁰. Salmasius thinks that the Arabs borrowed this word from the Latins, and that it is formed from vermes¹¹⁷¹; but even if we allow that it is not an original Arabic word, it is perhaps more probable that it is of Celtic extraction, as is the opinion of Astruc¹¹⁷². Guer or quer signified in the Celtic language a green (evergreen) oak; and in Lower Languedoc, uncultivated land on which the kermes-oak grows is still called garrigues. From this guer or quer Astruc is inclined to derive also the Latin word quercus, the etymology of which is nowhere else to be found. This conjecture is of the more importance, as mes in some parts signifies the fruit of the oak; so that guermes or kermes would be the acorns, les glands du chesne. Although kermes are not acorns, we cannot reject this appellation as improbable. Having requested the opinion of Professor Tychsen, as being well-acquainted with the Arabic language, on this subject, he readily complied with my desire, and I have given it in the note below, in his own words¹¹⁷³. It deserves to be remarked, that carmesin, carmin, cramoisi of the French, and charmesi, chermesino of the Italians, and other like words, hence derive their origin.

The coccus found on the roots of some plants, as far as I know, has not been mentioned by the ancients. That these insects however were collected in Germany in the twelfth century, was first proved, as I think, by J. L. Frisch¹¹⁷⁴. We are told that in this, and at least in the following century, several monasteries caused their vassals to collect this coccus, and bring to them by way of tribute¹¹⁷⁵, and that those who could not deliver the production in kind were obliged to pay, in its stead, a certain sum of money. The measure by which it was delivered was called coppus, in German Kopf, which word signified formerly not only a globular drinking-vessel, but also a measure both for dry and liquid things. It is still retained in the latter sense in Zurich, Aachen, Regensburg, Austria, and several other places¹¹⁷⁶. As the coccus was gathered at midsummer (St. John’s day), it was called St. John’s blood; probably because the clergy wished by that appellation to make this revenue appear as a matter of religion; and that name is still continued among the country people. As the monks and nuns carried on at that time various trades, particularly that of weaving, they could employ the St. John’s blood to very good purpose¹¹⁷⁷.

At later periods I find mention of the coccus only in the works of naturalists, such as those of Cornarius¹¹⁷⁸, Scaliger¹¹⁷⁹, and others; but how long the use of it, and the collecting of it for religious houses, continued, I cannot determine; perhaps longest in Poland. From that country, even at present (1792), a considerable quantity of it is sent every year to Venice; and I am inclined to believe that some of it is collected still in the county of Mark, and other parts of Germany. The following, as far as I can find, are the reasons why this indigenous production has lost its value. First, the root-kermes contain less colouring matter than the kermes of France and Spain. Secondly, the collecting of the former is more laborious as well as more tedious; and after they ceased to be paid in natura to the monasteries, they became too dear to stop the sale of those of France and Spain. But when the American cochineal, which is undoubtedly a far superior pigment, was in latter times made an article of commerce, and was sent to Europe in large quantities for dyeing, as it could be procured at all times, and in abundance, at a price which, if not low, was at least moderate, considering its excellent quality, from Mexico, where labour was cheaper¹¹⁸⁰, and where it was cultivated in plantations formed on purpose, the French and Spanish kermes were entirely forgotten, as appears by a French ordinance of 1671 respecting dye-stuffs: and this was the case much more with the German, which, in all probability, will never turn to great account, though some have entertained a contrary opinion.

Mexico, or New Spain, the original country of the cochineal, which word appears to be the diminutive of coccus¹¹⁸¹, was discovered by the Spaniards in 1518 and the years following. Who first remarked this profitable production, and made it known in Europe, I have not been able to discover. Some assert that the native Mexicans, before they had the misfortune of being visited by the Christians, were acquainted with cochineal, which they employed in painting their houses and dyeing their clothing¹¹⁸²; but others maintain the contrary¹¹⁸³. The Spaniards, who had long used kermes in their own country, could not fail soon to observe the superiority of the American; and I find by Herrera, that the king in the year 1523 desired to be informed by Cortez, whether what he had been told was true, that kermes were to be found in abundance in Mexico, and if they could, as was supposed, be sent with advantage to Spain. He requested him, should this information be true, to pay attention to it, and to cause them to be collected with diligence. This commodity must soon after have begun to be an object of commerce; for Guicciardini, who died in 1589, mentions cochineal among the articles procured then by the merchants of Antwerp from Spain¹¹⁸⁴. The plant on which the animal lives, belongs to the genus Cactus, and in Mexico is called nopal or tuna, though several plants of the same kind seem to be comprehended under the latter name. One species is the Opuntia, which has become indigenous in Spain, Portugal, and Italy, and which is not scarce in our green-houses. A second species is the cochinillifera. Oviedo¹¹⁸⁵ described and gave figures of two kinds of tuna; but of the cochineal he makes no mention. He speaks however of an excellent dye which the Americans prepared from the fruit, and formed into small cakes; but he afterwards acknowledges that he had received no authentic account on this subject. I nevertheless suspect that these cakes were made of cochineal; for Hernandez says that such were made in his time.

With the first cochineal, a true account of the manner in which it was procured must have reached Europe, and become publicly known. Acosta in 1530, and Herrera in 1601, as well as Hernandez and others, gave so true and complete a description of it, that the Europeans could entertain no doubt respecting its origin. The information of these authors, however, was either overlooked or considered as false, and disputes arose whether cochineal was insects or worms, or the berries or seeds of certain plants. The Spanish name grana, confounded with granum, may have given rise to this contest; but there is not, perhaps, in all natural history a point which can be so fully cleared up as this can by the most undoubted testimony. A Dutchman, named Melchior de Ruusscher, affirmed in a society, from oral information he had obtained in Spain, that cochineal consisted of small animals. Another person, whose name he has not made known, maintained the contrary with so much heat and violence, that the dispute at length ended in a bet. Ruusscher charged a Spaniard, one of his friends, who was going to Mexico, to procure for him in that country authentic proofs of what he had asserted. These proofs, legally confirmed in October 1725, by the court of justice in the city of Antiquera, in the valley of Oaxaca, arrived at Amsterdam in the autumn of the year 1726. I have been informed that Ruusscher upon this got possession of the sum betted, which amounted to the whole property of the loser; but that, after keeping it a certain time, he again returned it, deducting only the expenses he had been at in procuring the evidence, and in causing it to be published. It formed a small octavo volume, with the following title, printed in red letters: The History of Cochineal, proved by authentic documents¹¹⁸⁶. These proofs sent from New Spain are written in Dutch, French, and Spanish.

It may be readily supposed, that the high esteem in which this production was held would soon induce people to endeavour to convey these insects to other countries in order to breed them. This the Spaniards did every thing in their power to prevent; and notwithstanding the severity of the means which they employed, attempts were made for that purpose. When Rolander, a scholar of Linnæus, was in America, he sent to Upsal, at the request of that celebrated naturalist, a plant, with the insects upon it. The plant arrived in the year 1756, when Linnæus was engaged with his pupils. The gardener, who was not acquainted with the nature of it, cleared it from what he thought vermin, and planted it; so that Linnæus, when he returned from his class, did not find a single insect alive. This circumstance, which he has mentioned in his Systema Naturæ, I was told by himself. I am however of opinion, that this was not the real cochineal, but the other kind spoken of by Sylvester; as the former, according to the latest information, can scarcely be procured even with more labour and expense than Rolander could bestow, and would hardly stand such a long voyage to the northern regions. The spurious kind were sent from Jamaica to England, on the Opuntia ficus Indica, which was planted by Miller¹¹⁸⁷, but the insects did not live above three or four months. Thiery, a young French naturalist, brought the real cochineal to St. Domingo in the year 1777, at so much hazard that he deserves a place in the martyrology of the naturalist; but after his death, which soon followed, the insects perished through the avarice or negligence of his successors; and in that island there are none now to be found but the spurious kind¹¹⁸⁸.

I am inclined to believe that the art of employing kermes to dye a beautiful red colour was discovered in the East at a very early period; that it was soon so much improved as to excel even the Tyrian purple; and that it contributed to cause the proper purple to be at length abandoned. From the costly red dyes extolled so much by the Hebrew writers, and which, according to the opinion of learned commentators, were made from kermes, I shall not venture to adduce any proofs, as I am not acquainted with the Oriental languages to examine their accounts with accuracy; but I have found a passage in Vopiscus¹¹⁸⁹, which seems to render my conjecture very probable. That author informs us, that the king of Persia sent to the emperor Aurelian, besides other articles of great value, some woollen cloth, which was of a much costlier and brighter purple colour than any that had been ever seen in the Roman empire, and in comparison of which all the other purple cloth worn by the emperor and the ladies of the court appeared dull and faded. In my opinion, this cloth, which was of a beautiful purple red colour, was not dyed with the liquor of the murex, but with kermes. This idea was indeed not likely to occur to the Romans, who were acquainted only with the purple of the murex, and who had less experience in the arts in general than in that of robbing and plundering, or who at any rate in that respect were inferior to the Orientals. The Roman emperors caused this supposed purple to be sought for in India by the most experienced dyers, who, not being able to find it, returned with a vague report that the admired Persian purple was produced by the plant Sandix. I am well aware, that some commentators have supposed that the Sandix was our madder¹¹⁹⁰. Hesychius, however, says, very confidently, that the sandix is not a plant, but a kind of shrubby tree which yields a dye like the coccus¹¹⁹¹. The Roman dyers, perhaps, prejudiced in favour of the murex, made that only the object of their search; and their labour proving fruitless, they might have heard something of kermes, or the kermes-oak, which they did not fully understand. Our dyers, even at present, believe many false accounts respecting the dye-stuffs which they use daily.

In later times, when it was known that the beautiful Oriental kermes-dye was not properly purple, it was no longer called by that name, but was considered as a new dye, and acquired a new appellation. Cloth dyed with it was called scarlata, squarlata, scarleta, scarlatina, scharlatica. That these words have an affinity to our scarlet, every one allows, but it may be difficult to discover their origin. Pezronius¹¹⁹² affirms that they are of Celtic extraction, and have the same signification as Galaticus rubor. Astruc, as I have already shown, derives kermes from the same language, which, however, like the Egyptian history, is often employed to explain what people cannot otherwise explain, because so little is known of both that much contradiction is not to be apprehended. Others wish to make scarlet from the quisquilium, cusculium, or scolecium of Pliny. To some the word appears to be composed of the first half of kermes and lack, with the addition of only an S, and every one is left at liberty to determine at pleasure, whether lack is to be understood as the Arabic for red, or the German word lacken cloth. In the first case it signifies the same as vermiculare rubrum; in the latter pannus vermicularis. Stiler¹¹⁹³ says scarlach is entirely German, and compounded of schor the fire, and lacken cloth, so that its real signification is fire-cloth, fire-coloured cloth. Reiske, on the other hand, asserts, that the word is originally the Arabic scharal, which means the kermes-dye¹¹⁹⁴. Which of these conjectures is most agreeable to truth, cannot with certainty be concluded; but that the word is older than Dillon affirms it to be, on the authority of a Spaniard, can be proved. Dillon says that it was first used by Roderick, archbishop of Toledo, who finished his history of Spain in 1243¹¹⁹⁵. Vossius¹¹⁹⁶ has quoted several writers who use escarletum or scarletum. The oldest is Cæsarius, who lived about the year 1227. Matthew Paris, who wrote about the year 1245, used the word in referring to the year 1134. But I find that the emperor Henry III. in the middle of the eleventh century, conferred upon the count of Cleves the burg-graviate of Nimeguen, on condition of his delivering to him yearly three pieces of scarlet cloth made of English wool¹¹⁹⁷. The word may be often found in the twelfth century. It occurs in Petrus Mauritius¹¹⁹⁸, who died in 1157, and also in the writings of Arnold, who, in 1175, was the first abbot of Lubeck.

Of the preparation and goodness of the ancient scarlet we certainly know nothing: but as we find in many old pieces of tapestry of the eleventh century, and perhaps earlier, a red which has continued remarkably beautiful even to the present time, it cannot at any rate be denied that our ancestors extolled their scarlet not without reason. We may however venture to assert, that the scarlet prepared at present is far superior, owing principally to the effects of a solution of tin. This invention may be reckoned among the most important improvements of the art of dyeing, and deserves a particular relation.

The tincture of cochineal alone yields a purple colour, not very pleasant, which may be heightened to the most beautiful scarlet by a solution of tin in aqua regia, or muriatic acid¹¹⁹⁹. M. Ruhlenkamp at Bremen, one of the most learned dyers of Germany, and who has studied with great care every new improvement of his art, gave me the history of this scarlet dye, as I have already related in my Introduction to Technology¹²⁰⁰. The well-known Cornelius Drebbel, who was born at Alkmaar, and died at London in 1634, having placed in his window an extract of cochineal, made with boiling water, for the purpose of filling a thermometer, some aqua regia dropped into it from a phial, broken by accident, which stood above it, and converted the purple dye into a most beautiful dark red. After some conjectures and experiments, he discovered that the tin by which the window-frame was divided into squares had been dissolved by the aqua-regia, and was the cause of this change. He communicated his observation to Kuffelar, an ingenious dyer at Leyden, who was afterwards his son-in-law¹²⁰¹. The latter brought the discovery to perfection, and employed it some years alone in his dye-house, which gave rise to the name of Kuffelar’s-colour¹²⁰². Becher calls him Kuffler. Kunkel, in a passage which I cannot again find, makes his name Kuster, and says that he was a German. In the course of a little time the secret became known to an anabaptist called Gulich, and also to another person of the name of Van der Vecht, who taught it to the brothers Gobelins in France. Giles Gobelin, a dyer at Paris, in the time of Francis I. had found out an improvement of the then usual scarlet dye; and as he had remarked that the water of the rivulet Bievre, in the suburbs of St. Marceau, was excellent for his art, he erected on it a large dye-house, which, out of ridicule, was called Folie-Gobelins¹²⁰³, Gobelin’s-Folly. About this period, a Flemish painter, whom some name Peter Koek, and others Kloek, and who had travelled a long time in the East, established, and continued to his death in 1550, a manufactory for dyeing scarlet cloth by an improved method¹²⁰⁴. Through the means of Colbert, one of the Gobelins learned the process used for preparing the German scarlet dye from one Gluck, whom some consider as the above-mentioned Gulich, and others as Kloek; and the Parisian scarlet dye soon rose into so great repute, that the populace imagined that Gobelin had acquired his art from the devil¹²⁰⁵. It is well known that Louis XIV. by the advice of Colbert, purchased Gobelin’s building from his successors in the year 1667, and transformed it into a palace, to which he gave the name of Hôtel Royal des Gobelins, and which he assigned for the use of first-rate artists, particularly painters, jewellers, weavers of tapestry, and others. After that time the rivulet was no longer called Bievre, but Gobelins. About the year 1643, a Fleming, named Kepler, established the first dye-house for scarlet in England, at the village of Bow, not far from London; and on that account the colour was called at first, by the English, the Bow-dye¹²⁰⁶. In the year 1667, another Fleming, named Brewer, invited to England by king Charles II. with the promise of a large salary, brought this art there to great perfection¹²⁰⁷. All these accounts, however, and the names of the persons, are extremely dubious.

[Mr. Ward states in his Mexico in 1827, vol. i. p. 84, that the plantations of the Nopal (Opuntia cochinillifera), on which the cochineal insects feed, are confined to the district La Misteca in the state of Oaxaca, in Mexico. The animals are domesticated and reared with the greatest care. When the females have become fecundated and enlarged, the harvest commences. The insects are brushed off with a squirrel’s tail, and killed by immersing them in hot water, and afterwards drying them in the sun, or by the heat of a stove. Three harvests are made annually; the first being the best, since the impregnated females alone are taken; in the second the young females are also collected; and in the third both old and young ones, and skins are collected indiscriminately. Before the rainy season commences, branches of the nopal plant loaded with young insects are cut off and preserved in the houses to prevent the animals being destroyed by the weather. It is stated in a letter from Mr. Faber to Dr. Pereira (Chemical Gazette for January 15th, 1845), that the more extensive cultivators never kill the insect by immersion, but only by the baskets being placed in heated rooms or stoves.

Three kinds of cochineal are now met with in the English market: the black, silver, and foxy. Silver cochineal is the impregnated female insect, just before laying eggs; black cochineal is the female after laying and hatching the eggs. That technically known in London as “foxy” cochineal is composed of the insects of silver cochineal which have been killed by boiling water. They are thus burst, and acquire a peculiar reddish colour, very different from the fine transparent red which forms the finest black. It is said that on the average one pound of cochineal contains 70,000 dried insects. The quantity exported from and consumed in England in 1844, amounted to no less than 1,569,120 lbs.!]