The above poppy serves for a ground for _brown red_ colours, by the addition of logwood. A decoction of logwood, Brazil wood, and old fustic, as has been before observed, should always be kept ready boiled. _On dyeing silk a_ FINE CRIMSON. Silk intended for the crimson of cochineal should have only twenty pounds of soap to one hundred pounds of silk, and no azure, because the natural yellow of the silk which remains is favourable to the intended colour. The silk is to be strongly alumed and left in the alum from seven to eight hours, then washed and twice beetled at the river. _Remember_ how the alum is to be worked, as to the manual part. While this is doing, a liquor is to be thus got ready: take of blue and white galls from one to two ounces to each pound of silk, let them be well powdered and sifted; of fine cochineal, also well powdered and sifted, from two to three ounces, for every pound of silk; put these articles into pure soft water, and in a _boiler made of grain-tin_, (and not in what is commonly called tin, which is iron covered with tin, and which would utterly spoil the dye.) Neither would copper or brass suit as well as grain-tin. This has been observed before, (page 84.) in the article _on dyeing wool scarlet_. It ought, nevertheless, to be stated, that such tin boilers are difficult to be made of a certain size, and being liable, besides, to be melted without great care. Many dyers therefore, still use _copper_ boilers. When the cochineal and galls have boiled you add to the liquor for every pound of cochineal, about one ounce of solution of tin, which is called _composition_, and is made in the following manner: _Composition for dyeing silk_ SCARLET _or_ CRIMSON _with cochineal_. Take one pound of nitric acid, two ounces of muriate of ammonia, six ounces of fine tin, prepared as mentioned under _dyeing wool scarlet_, water twelve ounces. The muriate of ammonia, the prepared tin, and the water, are put into a stone jar, to which the nitric acid, is added, and the whole left to dissolve. This composition contains much more tin and sal-ammoniac than is used for the scarlet of cochineal upon wool; it is, however, absolutely necessary. An ounce of this composition, for every pound of silk, is to be added to the galls and cochineal when boiling. The boiler is then cooled down a little, the fire-door thrown open, the silk put in and worked from five to seven times, when the silk will have become pretty even as far as it is dyed. The copper is now again to be brought to boil; it should continue boiling, and the silk kept turning, for two hours; the fire is then taken from under the copper, and the silk is immersed entirely and left all night, or for seven or eight hours at least; it thus takes a full half shade. In the morning it is washed, twice beetled, wrung as usual, and hung up to dry.