The oldest mention of sealing-wax which I have hitherto observed in printed books is in the work of Garcia ab Orto[377], where the author remarks, speaking of lac, that those sticks used for sealing letters were made of it. This book was first printed in 1563, about which time it appears that the use of sealing-wax was very common among the Portuguese. The oldest printed receipt for making sealing-wax was found by Von Murr, in a work by Samuel Zimmerman, citizen of Augsburg, printed in 1579[378]. The copy which I have from the library of our university is signed at the end by the author himself. His receipts for making red and green sealing-wax I shall here transcribe. “To make hard sealing-wax, called Spanish wax, with which if letters be sealed they cannot be opened without breaking the seal:--Take beautiful clear resin, the whitest you can procure, and melt it over a slow coal fire. When it is properly melted, take it from the fire, and for every pound of resin add two ounces of vermilion pounded very fine, stirring it about. Then let the whole cool, or pour it into cold water. Thus you will have beautiful red sealing-wax. “If you are desirous of having black wax, add lamp-black to it. With smalt or azure you may make it blue; with white-lead white, and with orpiment yellow. “If instead of resin you melt purified turpentine in a glass vessel, and give it any colour you choose, you will have a harder kind of sealing-wax, and not so brittle as the former.” What appears to me worthy of remark in these receipts for sealing-wax is, that there is no mention in them of shell-lac, which at present is the principal ingredient, at least in that of the best quality; and that Zimmerman’s sealing-wax approaches very near to that which in diplomatics is called _maltha_. One may also conclude therefore that this invention was not brought from the East Indies. The expression Spanish wax is of little more import than the words Spanish-green, Spanish-flies, Spanish-grass, Spanish-reed, and several others, as it was formerly customary to give to all new things, particularly those which excited wonder, the appellation of Spanish; and in the like manner many foreign or new articles have been called Turkish; such as Turkish wheat, Turkish paper, &c.