The chief red pigments used by illuminators are vermilion (_cinnabar_ or sulphuret of mercury) and red lead (_minium_), from which the words _miniator_ and _miniature_ were derived, as is explained above at page 31[273]. Both these pigments are very brilliant and durable reds, the more costly vermilion is the more beautiful of the two; it has a slightly orange tint. _Mixed reds._ Illuminators commonly used the two colours mixed. One receipt recommends one-third of red lead combined with two-thirds of vermilion; Jehan le Begue's manuscript, § 177 (Mrs Merrifield's edition, Vol. I. page 141). Vermilion was prepared by slowly heating together metallic mercury with sulphur. Red lead (a protoxide of lead) was made by roasting white lead or else _litharge_ (ordinary lead oxide) till it absorbed a larger proportion of oxygen. _Ochre reds._ _Rubrica_ or _Indian red_ was a less brilliant pigment, which also was largely used in illuminated manuscripts, especially for headings, notes and the like, which were hence called _rubrics_. _Rubrica_ is a fine variety of _red ochre_, an earth naturally coloured by oxide of iron[274]; another variety was called bole Armeniac. In classical times the _rubrica of Sinope_ was specially valued for its fine colour. In addition to these mineral and very permanent reds there were some more fugitive vegetable and animal scarlets and reds which were used in illuminated manuscripts. _Murex._ _Murex._ One of these, the _murex_ shell-fish, has already been mentioned for its use as a dye for the vellum of the magnificent Byzantine and Carolingian gold-written manuscripts. The _murex_ was also used as a _color infectivus_ by concentrating it on powdered chalk[275]. _Kermes._ _Kermes._ Another very beautiful and important carmine-red pigment was made from the little _kermes_[276] beetle (_coccus_) which lives on the ilex oaks of Syria and the Peloponnese. It is rather like the _cochineal_ beetle of Mexico, but produces a finer and more durable colour, especially when used as a dye. For the woven stuffs of classical and mediaeval times, and in the East even at the present day, the kermes is one of the most beautiful and important of all the colours used for dyeing. The mediaeval name for the kermes red was _rubeum de grana_; when required for use as a pigment it appears to have been usual, not to extract the colour directly from the beetle, but to get it out of clippings of red cloth which had been dyed with the kermes, by boiling the cloth in a weak solution of alkali and precipitating the red pigment from the water with the help of alum.