This section is from the book "The Engineer's And Mechanic's Encyclopaedia", by Luke Hebert. Also available from Amazon: Engineer's And Mechanic's Encyclopaedia.
A vegetable substance, extensively employed in tanning and dying. It consists of the young shoots of a shrub, that grows naturally in many parts of the Mediterranean; the shoots, after being dried, are reduced to powder in a mill, which adapts it to the immediate use of the tanner and dyer: it abounds in tannin and the gallic acid, strikes a deep and rich black with the salts of iron, and is eminently valuable in the arts alluded to, (which see,) and many others.
 
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