The German name of verdigris (_Spangrün_) has by most authors been translated Spanish green; and it has thence been concluded that we received that paint first from the Spaniards. This word and the explanation of it are both old; for we find _ærugo_, and _viride Hispanicum_, translated _Spangrün_, _Spongrün_, or _Spansgrün_, in many of the earliest dictionaries[469], such as that printed in 1480[470]. For this meaning, however, I know no other proof than the above etymology, which carries with it very little probability; and I do not remember that I ever read in any other works that verdigris first came from the Spaniards. FOOTNOTES [462] Dioscorid. lib. v. cap. 91, 92. Theophrastus De Lapidibus, edit. Heinsii, p. 399. Plin. lib. xxxiv. cap. 11, 12. Oribasius, lib. xiii. Stephani Medicæ Artis Principes, p. 453. Vitruv. lib. vii. cap. 12. [463] Plinius: _vinacea_. Dioscorides: στέμφυλα. Theophrastus: τρύξ. The last word has various meanings: sometimes it signifies squeezed grapes; sometimes wine lees, &c., of which Niclas gives examples in his Observations on Geop. lib. vi. c. 13, p. 457; but it can never be translated by _amurca_, though that word is used by Furlanus, the translator of Theophrastus. The old glossary says, Ἀμοργὴ, ἐστὶν δὲ τρὺξ ἐλαιου. Oil, however, has nothing to do with verdigris. [464] Ἰὸς σκώληξ, ærugo scolacea, or vermicularis. [465] Should this explanation be just, we ought for _æruca_, the name given by Vitruvius to verdigris, to read _eruca_: though the conjecture of Marcellus Vergilius (Dioscorides, interprete Mar. Vergilio. Coloniæ, 1529, fol. p. 656), that the reading should be _ænea_ or _ærea_, is no less probable; for by this epithet its difference from _ærugo ferri_ was frequently distinguished. [466] [Dr. Ure states, in his Dictionary of Arts and Manufactures, that the manufacture of verdigris at Montpelier is altogether domestic. In most wine farm-houses there is a verdigris cellar; and its principal operations are conducted by the females of the family. They consider the forming the strata, and scraping off the verdigris the most troublesome part.] [467] [In England large quantities of verdigris are now prepared by arranging plates of copper alternately with pieces of coarse woollen cloth steeped in crude pyroligneous acid, which is obtained by the destructive distillation of wood.] [468] [Verdigris is a mixture of three compounds of acetic acid with oxide of copper, which contain a preponderance of the base, hence basic acetates; distilled verdigris is made by digesting verdigris, or the mixture of basic acetates of copper, with excess of acetic acid and crystallizing by evaporation: the acid then exists in such proportions as to form a neutral acetate of copper.]