The composition of the earliest inks has not yet been obtained and, likely, is unascertainable. The first inks are supposed to have been made from _sepia_--the secretion of the cuttle fish--or was composed of a mixture of soot and gum. Later, inks were prepared from the apples of the gall-oak, and from other materials--vegetable and mineral. Inks of various colors and kinds--red, purple, green, and blue, and, occasionally, of gold and silver--were often employed. The different colored inks were used, respectively, for the in-filling of characters and letters cut in stone and the like; for the ornamentation and embellishment of mummy-cases and manuscripts; for titles and initial letters (especially in the later centuries); for the purpose of emphasis by contrast with other inks; for marginal notes by a later hand (guarding thus against accidental alterations or interpolations of the original writing); and to agree with the esthetic taste of the copyist or his own notion of the value or the importance of the production, as is seen in some beautiful copies of the Bible or portions thereof and in other literary productions of the manuscript age. (See pages 51-54.) The ink used on the early papyrus such as "The Book of the Dead," was usually of a deep, glossy black color though occasionally other colors are also found. Concerning the picture-writing of the ancient Egyptians, Mr. Wallace Budge of the British Museum says, "Where it was possible the scribe represented an object in its natural colour; he made the moon yellow, the sun red, trees, plants and all vegetables, green; but objects requiring out of the way colours were not so well done, owing to the comparatively limited supply of colours at the disposal of the scribe."[37] In China, during the third century B. C., a dark varnish was employed to paint on silk and bamboo, a brush being used in its application. India ink came into use in China in the seventh century A. D. The beautiful black ink, known to the ancients, greatly deteriorated in quality in the Byzantine period, which may have occasioned the restriction of the red ink to the emperor's exclusive use, as at a later date the purple became the royal color. Attempts made by chemical analysis and the use of reagents to discover the ingredients of the inks used by the ancients have not yielded very definite results. Beyond some general conclusions as to the components of the first inks, there is little more than conjecture, and it now seems that their manufacture must be classed as one of the lost arts. XIII IMPLEMENTS OF WRITING