Part 47

In agriculture, navigation, and manufactures they have made some progress. In a few districts a slight sort of plough is used, but the usual instrument of tillage is a kind of cleaver. Two crops, one of rice and the other of maize or vegetables, are taken, and then the ground is allowed to lie fallow for eight or ten years. The inland Dyaks collect the forest products, rattan, gutta-percha, beeswax and edible birds' nests, and exchange them for clothing or ornaments, especially brass wire or brass guns in which consists the wealth of every chief. They spin and weave their own cotton, and dye the cloth with indigo of their own growing. Their iron and steel instruments are excellent, the latter far surpassing European wares in strength and fineness of edge. Their houses are neatly built of bamboos, and raised on piles a considerable height from the ground; but perhaps their most remarkable constructive effort is the erection of suspension bridges and paths over rivers and along the front of precipices, in which they display a boldness and ingenuity that surprise the European traveller. In the centre of most villages is the communal house where the unmarried men live, which serves as a general assembly hall. Some have a circuit of no less than 1000 ft. One on the banks of the Lundi was 600 ft. long and housed 400 persons.

The Dyaks have always been notorious for head-hunting, a custom which has now been largely suppressed. It is essentially a religious practice, the Dyak seeking a consecration for every important event of his life by the acquisition of one or more skulls. A child is believed ill-fated to whose mother the father has not at its birth presented skulls. The young man is not admitted to full tribal rights, nor can he woo a bride with any hope of success, until he has a skull or more to adorn his hut; a chief's authority would not be acknowledged without such trophies of his prowess. The strictest rules govern head-hunting; a period of fasting and confession, of isolation in a taboo hut, precedes the expedition, for which the Dyak clothes himself in the skins of wild beasts and puts on an animal mask. The Dyak curiously enough prefers the head of a fellow-tribesman, and the hunt is usually one of ambush rather than of open combat. Among some tribes it was not sufficient to kill the victim. He was tortured first, his body sprinkled with his own blood, and even his flesh eaten under the eyes of priests and priestesses who presided over the rites. Skulls, especially those of enemies, were held in great veneration. At meals the choicest morsels were offered them: they were supplied with betel and tobacco: fulsome compliments and prayers for success in battle addressed to them. Head-hunting at one time threatened the very existence of the race; but in spite of their reformation in this respect the Dyaks are not on the increase, a fact for which A.R. Wallace accounts by the hard life the women lead and their consequent slight fecundity.

The Dyaks speak a variety of dialects, most of which are still very slightly known. The tribes on the coast have adopted a great number of pure Malay words into common use, and it is often hard to ascertain their own proper synonyms. The American missionaries have investigated the dialects of the west coast (Landak, &c.), and their Rhenish brethren have devoted their attention to those of the south, into one of which (that of Pulu Petak) a complete translation of the Bible has been made. Mr Hardeland, the translator, has also published a Dyak-German dictionary.

DYCE, ALEXANDER (1798-1869), English dramatic editor and literary historian, was born in Edinburgh on the 30th of June 1798. After receiving his early education at the high school of his native city, he became a student at Exeter College, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. in 1819. He took holy orders, and became a curate at Lantegloss, in Cornwall, and subsequently at Nayland, in Suffolk; in 1827 he settled in London. His first books were _Select Translations from Quintus Smyrnaeus_ (1821), an edition of Collins (1827), and _Specimens of British Poetesses_ (1825). He issued annotated editions of George Peele, Robert Greene, John Webster, Thomas Middleton, Marlowe, and Beaumont and Fletcher, with lives of the authors and much illustrative matter. He completed, in 1833, an edition of James Shirley left unfinished by William Gifford, and contributed biographies of Shakespeare, Pope, Akenside and Beattie to Pickering's Aldine Poets. He also edited (1836-1838) Richard Bentley's works, and _Specimens of British Sonnets_ (1833). His carefully revised edition of John Skelton, which appeared in 1843, did much to revive interest in that trenchant satirist. In 1857 his edition of Shakespeare was published by Moxon; and the second edition, a great improvement on the old one, was issued by Chapman & Hall in 1866. He also published _Remarks on Collier's and Knight's Editions of Shakespeare_ (1844); _A Few Notes on Shakespeare_ (1853); and _Strictures on Collier's new Edition of Shakespeare_ (1859), a contribution to the Collier controversy (see COLLIER, JOHN PAYNE), which ended a long friendship between the two scholars. He was intimately connected with several literary societies, and undertook the publication of Kempe's _Nine Days' Wonder_ for the Camden Society; and the old plays of _Timon_ and _Sir Thomas More_ were published by him for the Shakespeare Society. He was associated with Halliwell-Phillips, John Payne Collier and Thomas Wright as one of the founders of the Percy Society, for publishing old English poetry. Dyce also issued _Recollections of the Table Talk of Samuel Rogers_ (1856). He died on the 15th of May 1869. He had collected a valuable library, containing amongst other treasures many rare Elizabethan books, and this collection he bequeathed to the South Kensington Museum. He displayed untiring industry, abundant learning, and admirable critical acumen in his editions of the old English poets. His wide reading in Elizabethan literature enabled him to explain much that was formerly obscure in Shakespeare; while his sound judgment was a check to extravagance in emendation. While preserving all that was valuable in former editions, Dyce added much fresh matter. His _Glossary_, a large volume of 500 pages, was the most exhaustive that had appeared.

DYCE, WILLIAM (1806-1864), British painter, was born in Aberdeen, where his father, a fellow of the Royal Society, was a physician of some repute. He attended Marischal College, took the degree of M.A. at sixteen years of age, and was destined for one of the learned professions. Showing a turn for design instead, he studied in the school of the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh, then as a probationer (not a full student) in the Royal Academy of London, and thence, in 1825, he proceeded to Rome, where he spent nine months. He returned to Aberdeen in 1826, and painted several pictures; one of these, "Bacchus nursed by the Nymphs of Nysa," was exhibited in 1827. In the autumn of that year he went back to Italy, showing from the first a strong sympathy with the earlier masters of the Florentine and allied schools. A "Virgin and Child" which he painted in Rome in 1828 was much noticed by Overbeck and other foreign artists. In 1829 Dyce settled in Edinburgh, taking at once a good rank in his profession, and showing considerable versatility in subject-matter. Portrait-painting for some years occupied much of his time; and he was particularly prized for likenesses of ladies and children. In February 1837 he was appointed master of the school of design of the Board of Manufactures, Edinburgh. In the same year he published a pamphlet on the management of schools of this description, which led to his transfer from Edinburgh, after eighteen months' service there, to London, as superintendent and secretary of the then recently established school of design at Somerset House. Dyce was sent by the Board of Trade to the continent to examine the organization of foreign schools; and a report which he eventually printed, 1840, led to a remodelling of the London establishment. In 1842 he was made a member of the council and inspector of provincial schools, a post which he resigned in 1844. In this latter year, being appointed professor of fine art in King's College, London, he delivered a remarkable lecture, _The Theory of the Fine Arts_. In 1835 he had been elected an associate of the Royal Scottish Academy; this honour he relinquished upon settling in London, and he was then made an honorary R.S.A. In 1844 he became an associate, in 1848 a full member, of the London Royal Academy; he also was elected a member of the Academy of Arts in Philadelphia. He was

## active in the deliberations of the Royal Academy, and it is said that

his tongue was the dread of the urbane President, Sir Charles Eastlake, for Dyce was keen in speech as in visage; it was on his proposal that the class of retired Academicians was established. In January 1850 Dyce married Jane, daughter of Mr James Brand, of Bedford Hill, Surrey. He died at Streatham on the 14th of February 1864, leaving two sons and two daughters.

Dyce was one of the most learned and accomplished of British painters--one of the highest in aim, and most consistently self-respecting in workmanship. His finest productions, the frescoes in the robing-room in the Houses of Parliament, did honour to the country and time which produced them. Generally, however, there is in Dyce's work more of earnestness, right conception, and grave, sensitive, but rather restricted powers of realization, than of authentic greatness. He has elevation, draughtsmanship, expression, and on occasion fine colour; along with all these, a certain leaning on precedent, and castigated semi-conventionalized type of form and treatment, which bespeak rather the scholarly than the originating mind in art. The following are among his principal or most interesting works (oil pictures, unless otherwise stated). 1829: "The Daughters of Jethro defended by Moses"; "Puck." 1830: "The Golden Age"; "The Infant Hercules strangling the Serpents" (now in the National Gallery, Edinburgh); "Christ crowned with Thorns." 1835: "A Dead Christ" (large lunette altarpiece). 1836: "The Descent of Venus," from Ben Jonson's _Triumph of Love_; "The Judgment of Solomon," prize cartoon in tempera for tapestry (National Gallery, Edinburgh). 1837: "Francesca da Rimini" (National Gallery, Edinburgh). 1838, and again 1846: "The Madonna and Child." 1839: "Dunstan separating Edwy and Elgiva." 1844: "Joash shooting the Arrow of Deliverance" (the finest perhaps of the oil-paintings). 1850: "The Meeting of Jacob and Rachel." 1851: "King Lear and the Fool in the Storm." 1855: "Christabel." 1857: "Titian's first essay in Colouring." 1859: "The Good Shepherd." 1860: "St John bringing Home his Adopted Mother"; "Pegwell Bay" (a coast scene of remarkably minute detail, showing the painter's partial adhesion to the "pre-Raphaelite" movement). 1861: "George Herbert at Bemerton." Dyce executed some excellent cartoons for stained glass:--that for the choristers' window, Ely Cathedral, and that for a vast window at Alnwick in memory of a duke of Northumberland; the design of "Paul rejected by the Jews," now at South Kensington, belongs to the latter. In fresco-painting his first work appears to have been the "Consecration of Archbishop Parker," painted in Lambeth palace. In one of the Westminster Hall competitions for the decoration of the Houses of Parliament, he displayed two heads from this composition; and it is related that the great German fresco-painter Cornelius, who had come over to England to give advice, with a prospect of himself taking the chief direction of the pictorial scheme, told the prince consort frankly that the English ought not to be asking for him, when they had such a painter of their own as Mr Dyce. The cartoon by Dyce of the "Baptism of Ethelbert" was approved and commissioned for the House of Lords, and is the first of the works done there, 1846, in fresco. In 1848 he began his great frescoes in the Robing-room--subjects from the legend of King Arthur, exhibiting chivalric virtue. The whole room was to have been finished in eight years; but ill-health and other vexations trammelled the artist, and the series remains uncompleted. The largest picture figures "Hospitality, the admission of Sir Tristram into the fellowship of the Round Table." Then follow--"Religion," the Vision of Sir Galahad and his Companions; "Generosity," Arthur unhorsed, and spared by the Victor; "Courtesy," Sir Tristram harping to la Belle Yseult; "Mercy," Sir Gawaine's Vow. The frescoes of sacred subjects in All Saints' church, Margaret Street, London; of "Comus," in the summer-house of Buckingham Palace; and of "Neptune and Britannia," at Osborne House, are also by this painter.

Dyce was an elegant scholar in more ways than one. In 1828 he obtained the Blackwell prize at Aberdeen for an essay on animal magnetism. In 1843-1844 he published an edition of the Book of Common Prayer, with a dissertation on Gregorian music, and its adaptation to English words. He founded the Motett Society, for revival of ancient church-music, was a fine organist, and composed a "non nobis" which has appropriately been sung at Royal Academy banquets. His last considerable writing relating to his own art was published in 1853, _The National Gallery: its Formation and Management_.

See Redgrave's _Dictionary of Artists_ (1878), and _Dictionary of National Biography_. (W. M. R.)

DYEING (O. Eng. _deagian_, _deah_; Mid. Eng. _deyen_), the art of colouring textile and other materials in such a manner that the colours will not be readily removed by those influences to which they are likely to be submitted--e.g. washing, rubbing, light, &c. The materials usually dyed are those made from the textile fibres, silk, wool, cotton, &c., and intended for clothing or decoration; but in addition to these may be mentioned straw, fur, leather, paper, &c.

Historical sketch.

The art of dyeing dates from prehistoric times, and its practice probably began with the first dawn of civilization. Although we cannot trace the successive stages of its development from the beginning, we may suppose they were somewhat similar to those witnessed among certain uncivilized tribes to-day--e.g. the Maoris of New Zealand. At first the dyes were probably mere fugitive stains obtained by means of the juices of fruits, and the decoctions of flowers, leaves, barks and roots; but in course of time methods were discovered, with the aid of certain kinds of earth and mud containing alumina or iron, whereby the stains could be rendered permanent, and then it was that the true art of dyeing began. There is no doubt that dyeing was, in the early period of its history, a home industry practised by the women of the household, along with the sister arts of spinning and weaving, for the purpose of embellishing the materials manufactured for clothing.

Historical evidence shows that already at a remote period a high state of civilization existed in Persia, India, and China, and the belief is well founded that the arts of dyeing and printing have been practised in these countries during a long succession of ages. In early times the products and manufactures of India were highly prized throughout Southern Asia, and in due course they were introduced by Arabian merchants to Phoenicia and Egypt, with which countries commercial intercourse, by way of the Persian and Arabian Gulfs, seems to have existed from time immemorial. Eventually the Egyptians themselves began to practise the arts of dyeing and printing, utilizing no doubt both the knowledge and the materials derived from India. Pliny the historian has left us a brief record of the methods employed in Egypt during the first century, as well as of the Tyrian purple dye celebrated already 1000 B.C., while the chemical examination of mummy cloths by Thomson and Schunck testifies to the use by the Egyptian dyers of indigo and madder. The Phoenician and Alexandrian merchants imported drugs and dyestuffs into Greece, but we know little or nothing of the methods of dyeing pursued by the Greeks and Romans, and such knowledge as they possessed seems to have been almost entirely lost during the stormy period of barbarism reigning in Europe during the 5th and succeeding centuries. In Italy, however, some remnants of the art fortunately survived these troublous times, and the importation of Oriental products by the Venetian merchants about the beginning of the 13 th century helped to revive the industry. From this time rapid progress was made, and the dyers formed important guilds in Florence, Venice and other cities. It was about this time, too, that a Florentine named Rucellai rediscovered the method of making the purple dye orchil from certain lichens of Asia Minor. In 1429 there was published at Venice, under the title of _Mariegola dell' arte de tentori_, the first European book on dyeing, which contained a collection of the various processes in use at the time. From Italy a knowledge of dyeing gradually extended to Germany, France and Flanders, and it was from the latter country that the English king Edward III. procured dyers for England, a Dyers' Company being incorporated in 1472 in the city of London.

A new impetus was given to the industry of dyeing by the discovery of America in 1492, as well as by the opening up of the way to the East Indies round the Cape of Good Hope in 1498. A number of new dyestuffs were now introduced, and the dyewood trade was transferred from Italy to Spain and Portugal, for the East Indian products now came direct to Europe round the Cape instead of by the old trade routes through Persia and Asia Minor. Eastern art-fabrics were introduced in increasing quantity, and with them came also information as to the methods of their production. In Europe itself the cultivation of dye-plants gradually received more and more attention, and both woad and madder began to be cultivated, about 1507, in France, Germany and Holland. Under the influence of Spain the Dutch largely developed their industries and made considerable progress in dyeing. The Spaniards, on their first arrival in Mexico (1518), noticed the employment of the red dyestuff cochineal by the natives, and at once imported it to Europe, where an increasing demand for the new colouring matter gradually developed in the course of the century. A further impetus was given to the trade by the Dutch chemist Drebbel's accidental discovery, in 1630, of the method of dyeing a brilliant scarlet on wool by means of cochineal and tin solutions. The secret was soon communicated to other dyers, and the new scarlet was dyed as a speciality at the Gobelin dyeworks in Paris, and some time later (1643) at a dyeworks in Bow, near London.

In 1662 the newly established Royal Society in London took a useful step in advancing the art of dyeing, and in order to inform and assist practical dyers, caused the publication of the first original account, in the English language, of the methods employed in dyeing, entitled "An apparatus to the history of the common practices of Dyeing." Ten years later the French Minister Colbert sought to improve as well as control the operations of dyeing, by publishing a code of instructions for the use of the woollen dyers and manufacturers in France. From this time, too, a succession of eminent chemists were appointed by the French government to devote some of their attention to the study of the industrial arts, including dyeing, with a view to their progress and improvement. Dufay, Hellot, Macquer, Berthollet, Roard and Chevreul (1700-1825) all rendered excellent service to the art, by investigating the chemical principles of dyeing, by publishing accounts of the various processes in vogue, by examining the nature and properties of the dyestuffs employed, and by explaining the cause of the several phenomena connected with dyeing. With the advent of the 18th century, certain old prejudices against the use of foreign dyewoods gradually disappeared, and very rapid progress was made owing to the birth of the modern chemistry and the discovery of several useful chemical products and processes--e.g. Prussian Blue (1710), Saxony Blue or Indigo Extract (1740), sulphuric acid (1774), murexide (1776), picric acid (1788), carbonate of soda (1793), bleaching powder (1798). Experiments on the practical side of bleaching and dyeing were made during this period, in England by Thomas Henry, Home and Bancroft, and in France by Dambourney, Gonfreville and others, each of whom has left interesting records of his work.

Down to the middle of the 19th century natural dyestuffs alone, with but few exceptions, were at the command of the dyer. But already in the year 1834 the German chemist Runge noticed that one of the products obtained by distilling coal-tar, namely, aniline, gave a bright blue coloration under the influence of bleaching powder. No useful colouring matter, however, was obtained from this product, and it was reserved for the English chemist Sir W.H. Perkin to prepare the first aniline dye, namely, the purple colouring matter Mauve (1856). The discovery of other brilliant aniline dyestuffs followed in rapid succession, and the dyer was in the course of a few years furnished with Magenta, Aniline Blue, Hofmann's Violet, Iodine Green, Bismarck Brown, Aniline Black, &c. Investigation has shown that the products of the distillation of coal-tar are very numerous, and some of them are found to be specially suitable for the preparation of colouring matters. Such, for example, are benzene, naphthalene and anthracene, from each of which distinct series of colouring matters are derived. In 1869 the German chemists Graebe and Liebermann succeeded in preparing Alizarin, the colouring matter of the madder-root, from the coal-tar product anthracene, a discovery which is of the greatest historical interest, since it is the first instance of the artificial production of a vegetable dyestuff. Another notable discovery is that of artificial Indigo by Baeyer in 1878. Since 1856, indeed, an ever-increasing number of chemists has been busily engaged in pursuing scientific investigations with the view of preparing new colouring matters from coal-tar products, and of these a few typical colours, with the dates of their discovery, may be mentioned: Cachou de Laval (1873); Eosin (1874); Alizarin Blue (1877); Xylidine Scarlet (1878); Biebrich Scarlet (1879); Congo Red (1884); Primuline Red (1887); Rhodamine (1887); Paranitraniline Red (1889); Alizarin Bordeaux (1890); Alizarin Green (1895). At the present time it may truly be said that the dyer is furnished with quite an embarrassing number of coal-tar dyestuffs which are capable of producing every variety of colour possessing the most diverse properties. Many of the colours produced are fugitive, but a considerable number are permanent and withstand various influences, so that the general result for some years has been the gradual displacement of the older natural dyestuffs by the newer coal-tar colours.

During this period of discovery on the part of the chemist, the mechanical engineer has been actively engaged in devising machines suitable for carrying out, with a minimum of manual labour, all the various operations connected with dyeing. This introduction of improved machinery into the dyeing trade has resulted in the production of better work, it has effected considerable economy, and may be regarded as an important feature in modern dyeing.

General principles.