The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1873-03-07
CURIOUS AND SCIENTIFIC.

OSh4OO6 AMI E9O1EILs \ IL H.
The OLD DYEs.-For the Egyptians,
color was a means of recording history.
We find upon the stucco of their walls
their kings holding court, their armies
marching out, their craftsmen IN the
ship-yard, with the ships floating = the
dock, and, in fact, we trsce all THEN
rites and customs painted in undyinp
colors. The French, who went to
Egypt with Napoleon, said that all the
colors were perfect except the Teenisl
white, which is the hardest for US. They
had no difficulty with the Tyrian pur-
pie. The burned city of Pompeii was
a city of stucco. All the. houses are
stucco outside, and it is stained with
Tyrian purple-the royal color of an
tiquity; and the flaming hues are as
bright as if painted but yesterday.
Come down from Titan, whose colors
are wonderfully and perfectly fresh, to
Sir Joshua Reynolds, and although his
colors are not yet hundred years old,
they are fading; the cOlors on his lips
are dying out, and the cheeks are losing
their tints. He did not know how to
mix we'll. The French have q theory
that there is a certain delicate shade OF
blue that Europeans can not see. Rus
kin says that we can not initiate IN
coIors that would last for twenty years
the magnificent scarlet In old illumin-
ated missals, now five centuries old
The Frenchman says 1 am the best
dyer IN Europe; nobody can equal me,
and nobody can surpass Lyons" Yet
in Cashmere, where the girls make
shawls worth thirty thousand dollars,
they will show him three hundred dis
tinct colors, which he not only cannot
make, but can not even distinguish.
ANCIENT MASTER ARTISANS Taking
the metals, the Bible in its first chap
ters shows that man first conquered
metals there In Asia, and on that spot
to-day he can work more wonders with
those metals than we can. One of the
surprises that the European artists re.
ceived when the English Numbered the
summer palace Of the King of China,
was the curiously wrought metal yes
sells o every kind, far exceeding all the
boosted skill of the wOrkmen of Eu-
rope. English surgeons going to India
are advised to have their instruments
giIded because English steel can not
bear the atmosphere Yet the Damas-
ems blades of the Crusades We're not
gilded and they are as perfect as they
were eight centuries ago. There was
one at the London Exhibition, the
point of which could be made to touch
the hilt, and could be put into a scab-
bard like a corkscrew, and bent every
way without breaking. If n London
chronometer maker wants the best steel
to use in his chronOmeter, he does not
send to Sheffield, the centre of all
science, but to the Punjaub, the empire
of the seven rivers, where there is no
science at all. The first needle ever
made in Europe was made in the time
of Henry the VIII and made by a
negro; and when he died, the art died
with him. Some of the first travellers
in Africa stated that they found a tribe
in the interior who gave them better
razors than they had. Scott, in g Tales
of the Crusaders" describes q meeting
between Richard Ceur de Lion
and Saiadin. Saladin asks Richard TO
show him the wonderful strength for
which he is famous, and the Norman
sovereign responds by .seyering bar
of iron which lies on the floor OF his
tent: Saladip says, Il can not do that >
but ne takes an elder down pillow from
the sofa, and, drawing his keen blade
across It, it falls in two pieces. Richard
saws: "This is the black art it is
the devil you can not cut that which
has no Resistance :" and Saladin, to
show him that such IS not the case,
takes from his shoulders a scarf which
Is 50 light that it almost floats in the
air, and, tossing it up, sewers it before
it can descend. George Thompson
states that he saw man in Calcutta
throw handful Of floss silk into the
air, and a Hindoo sever It into pieces
with his saber. We can produce no
thing like this.
CANALs.-The Suez Canal absOrbs
half its receipts in cleaning out the
sand which fills It annually, and it is
not yet known whether it Il a pecuniary
success. The ancients built a canal az
right angles to ours, because they knew
it would not fill up If built up IN that
direction, and they knew such a one as
ours would. There were magnificent
canals IN the land Of the Jews, with
perfectly arranged gates and sluices.
We have only just begun to under
stand ventilation properly for our
houses; yet late experiments at the
Pyramids in Egypt show that those
Egyptian tcmbs were ventilated in the
most perfect and scientific manner.