ped in a purple dye,
obtained from the murex. In color it ranged between minium and blue,
and included every degree in the scale of purple shades. The best sort
came from Pozzuoli. Purpurissimum indicum was brought from India. It
was of a deep blue, and probably was the same as indigo. Ostrum was a
liquid color, to which the proper consistence was given by adding
honey. It was produced from the secretion of a fish called ostrum, and
differed in tint according to the country from whence it came; being
deeper and more violet when brought from the northern, redder when
from the southern coasts of the Mediterranean. The Roman ostrum was a
compound of red ochre and blue oxide of copper. Hysginum, according to
Vitruvius, is a color between scarlet and purple. The celebrated
Tyrian dye was a dark, rich purple, of the color of coagulated blood,
but, when held against the light, showed a crimson hue. It was
produced by a combination of the secretions of the murex and buccinum.
In preparing the dye the buccinum was used last, the dye of the murex
being necessary to render the colors fast, while the buccinum
enlivened by its tint of red the dark hue of the murex. Sir H. Davy,
on examining a rose-colored substance, found in the baths of Titus,
which in its interior had a lustre approaching to that of carmine,
considered it a specimen of the best Tyrian purple. The purpura, as
mentioned in Pliny, was an amethyst or violet color.

_Brown._--Ochra usta, burnt ochre.--The browns were ochres calcined,
oxides of iron and manganese, and compounds of ochres and blacks.

_Black._--Atramentum, or black, was of two sorts, natural and
artificial. The natural was made from a black earth, or from the
secretion of the cuttle-fish, sepia. The artificial was made of the
dregs of wine carbonized, calcined ivory, or lamp-black. The
atramentum indicum, mentioned by Pliny, was probably the Chinese
Indian ink.

_White._--The ordinary Greek white was melinum, an earth from the Isle
of Melos; for fresco-painting the best was the African paroetonium.
There was also a white earth of Eretria and the annularian white.
Carbonate of lead, or white lead, cerussa, was apparently not much
used by the ancient painters. It has not been found in any of the
remains of painting in Roman ruins.

_Methods of Painting._--There were two distinct classes of painting
practiced by the ancients--in water colors and in wax, both of which
were practiced in various ways. Of