12. Chap. 12.-The Kermes Berry.

CHAP. 12.—THE KERMES BERRY.

The helm oak, however, by its scarlet berry[1] alone challenges competition with all these manifold productions. This grain appears at first sight to be a roughness on the surface of the tree, as it were, a small kind of the aquifolia[2] variety of holm oak, known as the cusculium.[3] To the poor in Spain it furnishes[4] the means of paying one half of their tribute. We have already, when speaking[5] of the purple of the murex, mentioned the best methods adopted for using it. It is produced also in Galatia, Africa, Pisidia, and Cilicia: the most inferior kind is that of Sardinia.

1. "Coccus." This is not a gall, but the distended body of an insect, the kermes, which grows on a peculiar oak, the "Quercus coccifera," found in the south of Europe.

2. We have previously mentioned, that he seems to have confounded the holly with the holm oak.

3. Poinsinet, rather absurdly, as it would appear, finds in this word the origin of our word "cochineal."

4. The kermes berry is but little used in Spain, or, indeed, anywhere else, since the discovery of the cochineal of America.

5. B. ix. c. 65.