The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 2 (of 6)

Chapter 251: CHAP. 64.—FABRICS CALLED CONCHYLIATED.

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The volume assembles an encyclopedic survey of the known world and its living inhabitants, moving from detailed regional geography and descriptions of seas, rivers, islands, and peoples to extended treatments of humanity, its generation, anatomy, and the origins and inventions of arts. Subsequent books catalog terrestrial animals—their habits, capture, and uses—followed by comprehensive observations on fish and marine creatures, their sizes and behaviors. Accounts mix naturalistic description, reported marvels, medicinal uses derived from animals, and travel and secondhand reports, organized as topical chapters intended as a practical compendium of natural and human phenomena.

CHAP. 64.—FABRICS CALLED CONCHYLIATED.

Fabrics that are called conchyliated are subjected to the same process in all other respects, but without any admixture of the juice of the buccinum; in addition to which, the liquid is mixed with water and human urine in equal parts,2699 one-half 2700 only of the proportion of dye being used for the same quantity of wool. From this mixture a full colour is not obtained, but that pale tint, which is so highly esteemed; and the clearer 2701 it is, the less of it the wool has imbibed.

(40.) The prices of these dyes vary in proportion to the quantity produced by the various shores; still, however, those who are in the habit of paying enormous prices for them, may as well be informed that on no occasion ought the juice of the pelagiæ to exceed fifty,2702 and that of the buccinum one hundred sesterces for one hundred pounds.2703