The British soldiers were
placed in a similar situation as regards their red coats when after
1878 the azo scarlets put the cochineal bug out of business.
The modern chemist has robbed royalty of its most distinctive insignia,
Tyrian purple. In ancient times to be "porphyrogene," that is "born to
the purple," was like admission to the Almanach de Gotha at the present
time, for only princes or their wealthy rivals could afford to pay $600
a pound for crimsoned linen. The precious dye is secreted by a
snail-like shellfish of the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. From a
tiny sac behind the head a drop of thick whitish liquid, smelling like
garlic, can be extracted. If this is spread upon cloth of any kind and
exposed to air and sunlight it turns first green, next blue and then
purple. If the cloth is washed with soap--that is, set by alkali--it
becomes a fast crimson, such as Catholic cardinals still wear as princes
of the church. The Phoenician merchants made fortunes out of their
monopoly, but after the fall of Tyre it became one of "the lost
arts"--and accordingly considered by those whose faces are set toward
the past as much more wonderful than any of the new arts.
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