This section is from "The American Cyclopaedia", by George Ripley And Charles A. Dana. Also available from Amazon: The New American Cyclopędia. 16 volumes complete..
Fistic, the dyewood of the morus tincto-rid, a tree which grows to a great height in Brazil and the West India islands. A yellow dye is obtained by boiling the wood, and this is principally used for converting silks and woollens, cotton yarn, and light fabrics, already dyed blue, to a green. Its use is almost wholly for compound colors, bichromate of potassa and lead giving a better yellow. The yellow crystalline substance morine separates from a concentrated decoction of fustic by cooling. The wood is known as old fustic to distinguish it from the wood of the rhus coti-nus, or Venice sumach, which is sometimes called young fustic, but more properly fustet, the name used by the French. The latter is a shrub cultivated in Italy and the south of France for purposes of dyeing and tanning. Its wood gives a yellowish decoction, which is used as an assistant to procure some particular tint. The color is too fugitive for use alone. The principal fustine is extracted from this wood.
 
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