So great is the antiquity of artificial ink that the name of its inventor or date of its invention are alike unknown. The poet Whitehead refers to it as follows: Hard that his name it should not save, Who first poured forth the sable wave." The common black ink of the ancients was essentially different in composition and less liable to fade than those used at the present time. It was not a stain like ours, and when Horace wrote "And yet as ink the fairest paper stains, So worthless verse pollutes the fairest deeds," he must have had in mind the vitriolic ink of his own time. But little information relative to black inks of the intermediate times has come down to us, and it is conveyed through questioned writings of authors who flourished about the period of the life of Jesus Christ; the Younger Pliny and Dioscorides are the most prominent of them. They present many curious recipes. One of these, suggested by Pliny, is that the addition of an infusion of wormwood to ink will prevent the destruction of MSS. by mice. From a memoir by M. Rousset upon the pigments and dyes used by the ancients, it would appear that the variety was very considerable. Among the white colors, they were acquainted with white lead; and for the blacks, various kinds of charcoal and soot were used. Animal skins were dyed black with gall apples and sulphate of iron (copper). Brown pigments were made by mixing different kinds of ochre. Under the name of Alexander blue, the ancients--Egyptians as well as Greeks and Romans--used a pigment containing oxide of copper, and also one containing cobalt. Fabrics were dyed blue by means of pastel-wood. Yellow pigments were principally derived from weld, saffron, and other native plants. Vermilion, red ochre, and minium (red lead) were known from a remote antiquity, although the artificial preparation of vermilion was a secret possessed only by the Chinese.