whose history is closely connected, to a great extent, with that of writing FLUIDS.

The Egyptian, and all other oriental and ancient scribes, who wrote upon stone, employed (of course) some instrument similar in character to the chisel of our modern tomb-stone cutters, or monument letterers. So with the Greeks and Romans, writing on surfaces of wax or wood, the instruments were the graphium, or glypheion, (the graver,) and the stilus, or caelum, all of steel or iron. When the use of a dark-colored liquid or Ink was introduced, there arose a necessity for instruments of very different material, and great flexibility, in opposition to the unyielding rigidity of the tools previously employed. Then were invented the first implements properly called Pens, or really resembling what we so denominate and use. These were universally made of vegetable material, growing in the tubular form, of convenient size, as the calamus, arundo, juncus, and, in general terms, the smaller stems of various plants called “reeds” and “rushes” in English. We have already mentioned the uniform employment of the hair-pencil, or brush, by the Chinese, from the most ancient time of their writing. The quill, or feather-pen, was introduced during the fourth century.

We have alluded to the palimpsest manuscripts. This is the term applied to parchments that have been twice written upon,—the first writing being effaced to make room for the second. During the period commonly called “the dark ages,” the monks and other scribes, copyists or book-makers, were in the habit of effacing the letters from old manuscripts, in order to make a clean surface for a new writing. In this way was caused the deplorable destruction of an immense and an inestimably valuable amount of ancient literature, of Greek and Roman history, poetry, eloquence and philosophy, merely to make room for mass-books, and other works of stupid superstition and mis-directed devotion, or, of scholastic theology and philosophy, now long ago universally condemned and exploded. Within the past and present generation, however, the learned world has been delighted by the surprising recovery of some of these long-lost treasures, through the skilful and ingenious labors of the deservedly famous Cardinal Angelo Mai, and others, whose researches in the libraries of Rome, Milan, Padua, Naples, Florence, and other cities, have resulted in the restoration of inestimably precious writings, thus partially obliterated or obscured.

Brande’s Dictionary of Literature, Science, and Art, gives a brief summary of the same general facts in the article “Palimpsest.”

The fullest and most elaborate exposition of the composition and manufacture of Ink which we have been able to find, however, is in the great French “Dictionnaire des Arts et Manufactures,” by an association of distinguished savans, in two volumes, imperial octavo, Paris, 1853, article, ENCRE.

But, of all articles and treatises on the subject, which we have examined, that in the English Penny Cyclopaedia has the merit of containing, if not the best and longest account, a very good and satisfactory one,—because it expresses all the essential facts in the fewest and best-chosen because perfectly intelligible words. As we do not attempt to furnish a text-book for ink-manufacturers, we do not transcribe in full, or translate, from these and other works of great value on this subject.

That modern inks do not resist the decomposing and destructive power of chemical agents (whether acids, alkalies, saline bodies or elements,) as well as the ancient inks, is the result of a necessity existing in their very composition and invention, and even in the use for which they were designed, and to which they are applied. A dye (like modern ink) is the result of chemical action, and is therefore subject to chemical re-agents; yet, when well made, it is proof against mechanical action, such as washing, rubbing, and scraping; nor can it be removed from paper to which it is applied, without destroying that material, or rendering that part of it practically useless. But, on the other hand, the ancient inks, which resist all chemical processes, can be removed by mechanical action, such as has been named. If a new ink were compounded of the two, possessing the best properties of each, any writing executed with it could be effaced by the joint or successive action of mechanical and chemical applications.

It must be borne in mind that the ancient inks had one use for which writing ink is now never required; and that was in making books, or multiplying copies of manuscripts indefinitely for general reading, or publication. The invention and universal employment of the art of printing has wholly done away with that.

Of Indelible Inks, or those used for marking fabrics of cotton, linen, &c., for the identification of ownership, it is not necessary to give any particular description. Their ordinary composition is very generally understood to be a solution of nitrate of silver, or some similar caustic, applied with a pen of proper material, to a portion of the surface of the cloth, which has been previously prepared by the absorption of a gummy or mucilaginous fluid dried upon it under pressure.

Sympathetic Inks are fluids employed in coloring drawings made for parlor amusement, or the diversion of children and youth. As, for instance, a landscape drawn in ordinary colors with a wintry aspect, cloudy or sombre sky, snow on the ground, and leafless trees, if properly touched with sympathetic inks, will, at any time, when brought near a fire, or otherwise subjected to a certain degree of warmth, change to the hues of summer, the sky becoming of a clear blue, the trees in full foliage, and the turf rich with grass, each with its appropriate shade of verdure, as also flowers of their various natural colors, &c., according to the fancy of the artist, the whole disappearing as the picture grows cold. The chloride, the nitrate, the acetate, and the sulphate of cobalt, form sympathetic inks,—the first, blue, and (with the addition of nickel,) green; the second, red. Chloride of copper gives a gamboge yellow; bromide of copper, a fine rich brown.

Letters written with a solution of acetate of lead, are invisible until exposed to the action of sulphuretted hydrogen, which makes them distinct, with the lustrous greyish black of sulphuret of lead, the same substance which is called galena when it occurs as lead-ore. A weak infusion of galls or other vegetable astringent, will, if applied to paper in the form of letters, become legible when touched with any solution of iron. If written with a solution of ferro-cyanide of potash, letters will remain invisible until touched with a solution of sulphate of iron.