Some interesting examples of the dyeing of cotton cloth with iron buff and iron grey are shown in Plate I. They came from the mineral springs at Arima, near Kobe in Japan, where the waters are so saturated with iron salts, that comparatively short immersion, and exposure to air, will bring out a deep orange shade. The Japanese, not content with dyeing their goods plain colors, have for many generations utilized these springs in the production of figures and designs on the cloth. Plate V is an example of stencil work, where the white patterns are made by covering parts of the cloth with a “resist paste” which protects whatever it is in contact with from the action of the coloring agent. Plate II shows a piece of soft calico on which impressions of leaves have been made by placing fresh juicy leaves between two pieces of cloth, and beating them with wooden mallets. Plate III shows the same piece of cloth as in Plate II, after immersion in the iron spring, and exposure to air. The tannin from the leaf juice converts some of the iron oxide into iron grey; while the white figures are made by tying the cloth with string or tape (Tied and Dyed work) before dyeing it. So far as we can tell, these two were the only mineral colors known to the ancients. Several other mineral colors, however, were in common use by the cotton dyers in the days preceding the introduction of modern dyestuffs, but it is hardly worth while to dwell here on many of them. Yellow and orange shades were obtained by impregnating cloth with lead salts, and then developing with a bath of chromate or bichromate of potash, with more or less caustic alkali added for the darker shades. Prussian blue, too, was used as a substitute for the more expensive indigo. This was formed by using the nitrate of iron for the first bath, and then developing the color with a bath of yellow prussiate (_ferrocyanide_) of potash. These colors, however, are so far inferior in their application, and in fastness to light and to rubbing, to the colors now at our command, that they have disappeared entirely for textile work, though they are still widely used for pigments. =Manganese Bronze (Manganese Brown, Bistre).=—There is one good mineral color, however, which came into use early in the last century and which, while hardly ever used by professional dyers, is of interest to craftsmen. This color, in its chemical composition, greatly resembles the iron buff. It is quite cheaply produced by first impregnating the cloth to be dyed with a solution of a manganese salt (_manganese chloride_ is the cheapest), and then, by means of a second bath of alkali, forming a deposit on the fibre of pink _manganese hydroxide_—corresponding to the greenish _ferrous hydroxide_—which, on exposure to the air, absorbs oxygen and forms the final brown color.