f tints were thoroughly satisfying to the eye. But
degenerated by European commerce, the artistic sense of beauty itself
is disappearing throughout our Indian Empire.

Persian carpets (the fine old ones of the fourteenth to the
seventeenth centuries) give us lessons in the art of isolating
colours. In these, a flower will lie upon a surface which contains two
or more other tints, and as the design passes over them, the outline
colour is changed, so as to isolate the flower equally on the
different grounds. This is done with such art that the eye ignores the
transition till it is called to remark it. For instance, as a white,
or no-coloured pattern, wanders over a green and red ground, the
outline changes suddenly from green to red, and again to green as it
leaves the opposite colour on the ground pattern.

Mr. Floyer speaks of the brilliancy and lasting qualities of the dyes
which the Persians, by slow and tedious processes, extract from
plants; from the "runaschk" (madder), a fine red; from the "zarili"
(the golden), which is a yellow flower from Khorasan, and also from
the leaves of the vine, a bright yellow.[309] They import indigo from
Shastra (or from India), by the Khurum river. He says these dyes are
perfectly fast, leaving no trace on a wetted rubber, whereas the
European dyes they sometimes use come off freely.

Pliny says the Gauls had invented dyes counterfeiting the purple of
Tyre; also scarlet, violet, and green, all of these were dipped in the
juices of herbs.[310]

Vitruvius says the Romans extracted dyes from flowers and fruits, but
he neither specifies nor describes them.

The ancient Highland tartans were dyed with bark of alder for black,
bark of willow for flesh colour. A lichen growing on stones supplied
their violets and crimson.[311] The lichen on the birch-tree gives a
good brown; heather gives red, purple, and green.[312]

Thus we see that pure colours for dyeing textiles have been extracted
from vegetable substances--herbs, wood, seeds, flowers and fruits,
mosses and sea-weeds;[313] mineral substances--earths, sands, ores,
metals, rusts, and stones; animal substances--both of land, water, and
air; beasts, fishes, shells, birds, and insects.

It is evident, from the derivation of the word, that there were
chromatic scales in colour before the phrase was ever applied to
music.

The Greeks and Romans are supposed to have understood chromatic scales
of tints--animal, vegetable, and minera