The best authorities of the present day, however, are of opinion that the celebrated Tyrian-purple was extracted from a mollusk known as the Janthina prolongata, a shell abundant in the Mediterranean and very common near Narbonne, where the Tyrian purple dye-works were in operation at least six hundred years before Christ. The price current of some of the inks and colors of antiquity, as quoted by Arbuthnot, are cited herewith: Armenian purple 30 hs.=4 s. 10 1/3 d. India purple from one Denarius, or 7 3/4 d. to 30 Denarii, 19 s. 4 1 2 d. Pelagium, the juice of one sort fishes that dyed purple, 50 hs.=8 s. 0 7/8 d. Buccinum the juice of the other fish that dyed purple, 100 hs.=16 s. 1 3/4 d. Cinnabar 50 hs.=8 s. 0 7/8 d. Tarentine red purple, price not mentioned. Melinum, a sort of colour that came from Melos, one Nummus,=1 15/16 d. Paretonium, a sort of colour that came from aegypt, very lasting, 6 Denarii,=3 s. 10 1/2 d. Myrobalanus, 2 Denarii,=1 s. 3 1/2 d. The last-named substance is the fruit of the Termi- nalia, a product of China and the East Indies, best known as Myrabolams and must have been utilized solely for the tannin they contain, which Loewe estimates to be identical with ellago-tannic acid, later discovered in the divi-divi, a fruit grown in South America, and bablah which is also a fruit of a species of Acacia, well known also for its gum. No monuments are extant of the ancient Myrabolam ink. Antimony and galls were used by the Egyptian ladies to tint their eyes and lashes and (who knows) to write with. Many of the dyes employed as ink were those occurring naturally as animal and vegetable products, or which could be produced therefrom by comparatively simple means, otherwise we would not be confronted with the fact that no specimens of ink writing of natural origin remain to us. The very few specimens of ink writing which have outlasted decay and disintegration through so many ages, are found to be closely allied to materials like bitumen, lampblack obtained from the smoke of oil- torches or resins; or gold, silver, cinnabar and minium. Josephus asserts that the books of the ancient Hebrews were written in gold and silver. "Sicca dewat" (A silver ink standeth), as the ancient Arabic proverb runs. Rosselini asserts: "the monumental hireoglyphics of the Egyptians were almost invariably painted with the liveliest tints; and when similar hireoglyphics were executed on a reduced scale, and in a more cursive form upon papyri or scrolls made from the leaves of the papyrus the pages were written with both black and colored inks."