With regard to its use as a dyeing drug we find the following remarks in the Entomology of Kirby and Spence. “It has been employed to impart a blood red or crimson dye to cloth from the earliest ages, and was known to the Phœnicians before the time of Moses, under the name of _Tola_ or _Thola_, to the Greeks under that of _Coccus_, and to the Arabians and Persians under that of _Kermes_ or _Alkermes_; whence, as Beckmann has shown, and from the epithet _vermiculatum_ given to it in the middle ages, when it was ascertained to be the produce of a worm, have sprung up the Latin _coccineus_, the French _cramoisi_ and _vermeil_, and our _crimson_ and _vermilion_. It was most probably with this substance that the curtains of the tabernacle (Exodus xxvi.) were dyed deep red, (which the word scarlet, as our translators have rendered it, then implied, not the colour now so called, which was not known in James the First’s reign, when the Bible was translated;)—it was with this that the Grecians and Romans produced their crimson; and from the same source were derived the imperishable reds of the Brussels and Flemish schools. In short, previous to the discovery of cochineal, this was the material universally used for dyeing the most brilliant red then known; and though that production of the New World has, in some respects undeservedly, supplanted it in Europe, where it is little attended to except by the peasantry of the provinces in which it is found, it still continues to be employed in great part of India and Persia. Some other insects besides the cochineal and lac insects are found to produce dyes. The galls of a peculiar species of aphis are used in the Levant, Persia and China, for dyeing silk crimson, and it is thought that the galls of another species of this insect, common on the fir trees of this country, might be employed for a similar purpose. A species of mite is employed in Guinea and Surinam as a dye, and it is suggested that the beautiful little dazzling red mite which is common here, might also yield a valuable tincture. Réaumur has even suggested that water colours of beautiful tints not otherwise easily attainable, might be procured by feeding the common clothes-moth on different coloured wools. The excrement of this insect always retains the colour of the substance forming the food, and mixes well with water to form a pigment. [Illustration: NUT GALLS AND THE GALL INSECT. ] CHAPTER VIII. MANUFACTURE OF NUT GALLS BY THE GALL INSECT.