The home journal. (Winchester, Tenn.) 1858-188?, 1873-03-13
CURIOUS AND SCIENTIFIC.

CURIOUS AND SCIENTIFIC.
The OLD DYES. For the Egyptians,
color was 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 in the
dock, and, in fact, we trace all their
rites and customs painted in undying
colors. The French, who went to
Egypt with Napoleon, said that all the
colors were perfect except the greenish
white, which is the hardest for u.s. They
had no difficulty with the Tyrian pur
pie. The burned city of Pompeii was
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 us
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 theory
that there is certain delicate shade Of
,, blue that Europeans can not see. Rus
kin says that we can not initiate il
colors that would last for twenty year
the magnificent scarlet in old illumin
ated missals, now five centuries old.
The Frenchman says 81 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 i'll 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 plundered the
summer palace of the King of China,
was the curiously wrought metal YES
sells o every kind, far exceeding all the
boasted skill of the workmen of Eu-
rope. English surgeons going to India
are advised to have their instruments
gilded because English steel can not
bear the atmosphere. Yet the Damas-
Gus blades of the Crusades were 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 corkscrew, and bent every
way without breaking. If London
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
negro and when he died, the art died
with him. Some OF the first travellers
in Africa stated that they found tribe
IN the interior who gave them better
:azors than they had. Scott, in "Tales
,f the Crusaders" describes meeting
between Richard Ceur de Lion
md Saladin. Saladin asks Richard to
how him the wonderful strength for ,
which he is famous, and the Norman
sovereign responds by severing bar
,f iron which lies ON the floor of his ,
ent. Saladin says, ~ can not do that,
,ut he takes an elder down pillow from
he sofa, and, drawing his keen blade ;
Icross it, it falls in two pieces. Richard +;
ays: "This is the black art it is /
he devil (; you can not cut that which .
has NO resistence;" and Saladin, to ;
how him that such is not the case,
axes from his shoulders scarf which =
S so light that it almost floats in the !;
ir, and, tossing it up, sewers it before .
t can descend. George Thompson
tates that he saw man in Calcutta
hrow handful Of floss silk into the :
ir, and Hindoo sever it into pieces (,
nth his saber. We can produce no.
hing like this. )
CAsALs.-The Suez Canal absorbs q
Islf its receipts in cleaning out the =
and which fills,:' annually, and it is
%. ye. known vfaiha- 'tt.spssuni.sg1
forh dsyA-.o-ra:s, rs73.
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