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Show COSTLINESS OF INDIA INK.' Best Quality of the Product Is j:,i J In China Process of Its Manufacture. "This India Ink," said the clover Chlneso art stinlont, "has no more right to bo called Indian than your Amorlcan redskins havo to that name. For India Ink all comes iron, China, and India nover produced a stick' of It. "Anhul, my own province. Is the one whero India Ink Is :;:aile. Tho best of tho ink Is kept at humo, for the use of the royal scribes and the official literati, rt Is only the lowor grado that is exported. This lower I grade sells at wholesale In Anhul for 11,500 a ton. "Tho very best grado India Ink, the kind rich with gold, Is worth 75. 000 a ton. "Tho constituents of India Ink are colxa oil, pork fat, lampblack, glue, musk, gold loaf and the oil of a poisonous poi-sonous treo, tho heng. which grows only in the Yangsto valley. "After the admixture of tho oils, the lampblack, the fat and the glue, the resultant paste Is beaten for many hours with steel hammers upon wooden wood-en anvils, and during that long beating beat-ing certain quantities of musk and of gold leaf aro added, tho musk to give the Ink a perfume, the gold to give It luster. Afterward the Ink Is dried for three weeks In molds. The stocks are then decorated, the most artistic scribes gilding them with very beautiful Chi- "' neso characters. "Thero Is no Ink worthy to be mentioned In tho samo breath with ours an Ink redolent of musk nnd bright with gold." |