PURPLE COLORS. Painters in oil and water colors produce the various shades of purple by the admixture of pure red and pure blue colors. Dyers obtain this color from various sources, all of which are curious and interesting. From a very early period, purple has been one of the most highly prized of all colors, and came to be the symbol of imperial powe'r. Probably one great reason for this was the enormous cost of the only purple color known to the ancients, the Tyrian purple, which was obtained in, minute quantities only from a Mediterranean species of molluscous animal or shellfish, the murex trunculus, and perhaps also purpura lapillus. In the time of Cicero, wool double-dyed with this color was called dibapha, and was so excessively dear, that a sin gle hound-weight cost a thousand &moil, or about sterling. A single murex only yields a small drop of the secretion, consequently very large numbers had to be taken in order to obtain enough to dye even a small amount of wool. Tarentum, the modern Otranto, was one of the great murex fisheries of the Romans, and there they had a num ber of large dyeing establishments. Vast heaps of tle shells have been discovered there,
the remains of its former industry. With the decline of the Roman empire, the employ ment of this purple color ceased, and it was not until a Florentine of the name of Orchil lini discovered the dyeing properties of the lichen now called orchella weed, that a sim ple purple, color was known in Europe. The discovery was kept secret in Italy for nearly a century, and that country supplied the rest of Europe with the prepared dye, which received the name of orchil or archil (q.v.). The color was very fugitive, soon ceased to be used by itself; it, however, was found very useful in combination, and. has a remarkable power of brightening up other colors. Many improvements have been lately made in archil dyeing, especially in fixing it. Its value, however, has been greatly lessened by the discovery of the beautiful series of purples yielded by coal-tar as results of the combination of one of its products called aniline with other bodies. Sec DYEING.