OCR Text |
Show THE SNAIL LOSES OUT. . Latter-day chemistry has won another an-other victory. It has outstripped the snail in the race for commercial supremacy, su-premacy, and the snail will now have to take a back scat. Owing to tho peculiarly pecu-liarly hazardous elements which the snail encountered in this contest, no doubt ho will be glad enough to have the chemist carry off the pennant. For many, many years "Tyrian purple" pur-ple" was a dye accounted too splendid splen-did for tho use of any savo kings and nobles. It was so costly that none but the very rich could afford it. Wool dyed with it was worth $173 a pound, even in pre-war times. This dye was obtained from a sea-snail sea-snail common to the coast of New England. En-gland. The snail carries an ink well on his back, filled with a fluid indelible and durable. The little animal is found clinging to rocks just below the level of low tide. When first expressed, the fluid is yellow in color, but when a garment marked with it is exposed to the sun, it turns green, then blue, then purple, and finally takes on a brilliant unchangeable crimson. The liquor is procured by crushing the snails in a mortar. Six pounds of it is required to stain a pound of wool. The fabric is first soaked in the liquid and afterwards exposed to sunlight. Stuffs thus dyed are said to have a remarkable re-markable color effect, presenting changing chang-ing hues to the eye. -Cow chemistry is ablo to produce Tyrian purple in the laboratory. It is catalogued as merely one of a long list of coal-tar derivatives which come under the general head of "aniline" dyes. Xo doubt tho snails which have heretofore here-tofore been party to tho coloring of garments worn by kings and queens and such like will extend a unanimous unani-mous vote of congratulation to the chemists who have usurped their place in the world. They are not a whit envious, the snails aren 't. |