roducing methyl groups, until he gets it just to
his liking.

Art can go ahead of nature in the dyestuff business. Before man found
that he could make all the dyes he wanted from the tar he had been
burning up at home he searched the wide world over to find colors by
which he could make himself--or his wife--garments as beautiful as those
that arrayed the flower, the bird and the butterfly. He sent divers down
into the Mediterranean to rob the murex of his purple. He sent ships to
the new world to get Brazil wood and to the oldest world for indigo. He
robbed the lady cochineal of her scarlet coat. Why these peculiar
substances were formed only by these particular plants, mussels and
insects it is hard to understand. I don't know that Mrs. Cacti Coccus
derived any benefit from her scarlet uniform when khaki would be safer,
and I can't imagine that to a shellfish it was of advantage to turn red
as it rots or to an indigo plant that its leaves in decomposing should
turn blue. But anyhow, it was man that took advantage of them until he
learned how to make his own dyestuffs.

Our independent ancestors got along so far as possible with what grew in
the neighborhood. Sweetapple bark gave a fine saffron yellow. Ribbons
were given the hue of the rose by poke berry juice. The Confederates in
their butternut-colored uniform were almost as invisible as if in khaki
or _feldgrau_. Madder was cultivated in the kitchen garden. Only logwood
from Jamaica and indigo from India had to be imported. That we are not
so independent today is our own fault, for we waste enough coal tar to
supply ourselves and other countries with all the new dyes needed. It is
essentially a question of economy and organization. We have forgotten
how to economize, but we have learned how to organize.

The British Government gave the discoverer of mauve a title, but it did
not give him any support in his endeavors to develop the industry,
although England led the world in textiles and needed more dyes than any
other country. So in 1874 Sir William Perkin relinquished the attempt to
manufacture the dyes he had discovered because, as he said, Oxford and
Cambridge refused to educate chemists or to carry on research. Their
students, trained in the classics for the profession of being a
gentleman, showed a decided repugnance to the laboratory on account of
its bad smells. So when Hofmann went home he virtually took the infant
industry along with him to Germany, where