תולעת, Gen. xxxviii, 28; Exod. xxv, 4. This tincture or colour
expressed by a word which signifies worm colour, was produced from a
worm or insect which grew in a coccus, or excrescence of a shrub of the
ilex kind, which Pliny calls “coccus scolecius,” the wormy berry, and
Dioscorides terms “a small dry twig, to which the grains adhere like
lentiles:” but these grains, as a great author observes on Solinus, “are
within full of little worms or maggots, whose juice is remarkable for
dying scarlet, and making that famous colour which we admire, and with
which the ancients were enraptured.” We retain the name in the
cochineal, from the opuntia of America; but we improperly call a mineral
colour “vermilion,” which is derived from _vermiculus_, a little worm.
The shrub on which the cochineal insect is found is sometimes called the
“kermez oak,” from _kermez_, the Arabic word both for the worm and the
colour; whence “carmasinus,” the French “cramoisi,” and the English
“crimson.”
expressed by a word which signifies worm colour, was produced from a
worm or insect which grew in a coccus, or excrescence of a shrub of the
ilex kind, which Pliny calls “coccus scolecius,” the wormy berry, and
Dioscorides terms “a small dry twig, to which the grains adhere like
lentiles:” but these grains, as a great author observes on Solinus, “are
within full of little worms or maggots, whose juice is remarkable for
dying scarlet, and making that famous colour which we admire, and with
which the ancients were enraptured.” We retain the name in the
cochineal, from the opuntia of America; but we improperly call a mineral
colour “vermilion,” which is derived from _vermiculus_, a little worm.
The shrub on which the cochineal insect is found is sometimes called the
“kermez oak,” from _kermez_, the Arabic word both for the worm and the
colour; whence “carmasinus,” the French “cramoisi,” and the English
“crimson.”