_Vegetable Dyes._—The earliest dyes were probably of vegetable origin, discovered by accidentally staining garments with juices of fruits or plants. Thus, for instance, in the Bible we read of “garments dyed in the blood of grapes”; and we can all call to mind fruits in common use—blackberries, huckleberries, peaches, and the like, whose juice could be used, if nothing better presented itself, to dye or stain light-colored fabrics. In most cases, as in those just mentioned, the colors would be fugitive, and after a short time become dull and uninteresting. But in the process of time vegetable dyes were discovered, in one part and another of the world, which, in the hands of those who knew how to work with them, gave colors both fast and beautiful. And thus grew and developed the art of the professional dyer. For instance, in many widely separated countries, such as India, Java, South and Central America, plants are found, known as _indigoferae_, whose juices, yellow when fresh, rapidly turn blue when exposed to the air. These juices impart a rich and permanent blue stain to objects moistened with them while they are still yellow; and this blue is the coloring matter known as indigo. The plants bearing it have been cultivated for hundreds, if not, indeed, thousands of years, and used for dyeing. Garments and blankets found in the so-called Inca graves in Peru and Chili, dating from long before the Spanish conquest, as well as the oldest specimens of Hindoo workmanship, and even some of the textiles found in the tombs of Egypt, all show examples of this same dyestuff. It was so valuable that, in small quantities and at vast expense, it was imported by the Romans from India, as is shown by its Latin name, Indicum (Indian), from which its present name, indigo, is directly derived. But, curiously enough, exactly the same dyestuff, but in a very impure form, and derived from an entirely different plant, the _isatis tinctoria_, commonly known as _woad_, has been discovered and used in Western Europe from time immemorial. And when Julius Cæsar, nearly two thousand years ago, led a Roman army for the first time across the channel into England, he found the native Britons adorning themselves by smearing their bodies with a dirty blue dyestuff obtained from this source. So, little by little, the knowledge of these natural dyestuffs and their application grew and expanded. But as a matter of fact, so far at least as can be gathered from the old writers, those known and used by the ancient Greeks and Romans were few in number and of comparatively little interest. For blues they were obliged to use the inferior color derived, as above mentioned, from the native woad, excepting when, for some special purposes, a little indigo was imported from the East at enormous expense.