a black liquor generally made of an infusion of galls, copperas, and a little gum arabic.

To make a very good ink for writing: take three ounces of good galls, reduced to powder; which infuse in three pints of river or rain-water, setting it in the sun or a gentle heat, for two days; then take common copperas, or green vitriol, three ounces; powder it, put it into the infusion, and set it in the sun for two days more; lastly, shake it well, and add an ounce of good gum arabic.

To make the London powder-ink: take ten ounces of the clearest nut-galls, which reduce to a fine powder; then add two ounces of white copperas, four ounces of Roman vitriol, and of gum arabic or sandarach an ounce; pound and sift them very fine. This powder, though whitish itself, will, when put into water, turn it to a good black ink: an ounce of the powder serves to make a pint of ink.

To make a shining ink: take gum arabic and Roman vitriol, of each an ounce; galls well bruised, a pound; put them into rape-vinegar, or vinegar made of clear small beer; set them in a warm place, stir them often till the liquor becomes black, and then add to a gallon of this preparation an ounce of ivory-black, and a quarter of a pint of seed-lac varnish.

To make a shining Japan or China ink: take an ounce of lamp-black, and clarify it in an earthen pipkin to take out the dross; two drams of indigo; half a dram of peach black; one dram of black endive, burnt; reduce them to a very fine powder, and then take a moiety of fig-leaf water, another part of milk, and a very little gum arabic; and mixing all the ingredients well together, make them up for use.

Printing Ink is made by boiling or burning linseed-oil till it is pretty thick, adding a little rosin to it while hot, and then mixing this varnish with lamp-black.

Ink is also an appellation given to any coloured liquor, used in the same manner as the atramentum or black ink; as red, green, blue, yellow, &c., inks.

Red ink is made thus: take wine-vinegar a pint; rafplings of brazil, one ounce; alum, half an ounce; boil them gently, and add five drams of gum arabic; dissolve the gum, strain the ingredients, and keep the liquid for use.

Green ink is made by boiling verdigrease with argol in fair water, and adding a little gum arabic.

Blue ink is made by grinding indigo with honey and the white of eggs, and making it fluid with water.

Yellow ink is made by an infusion of saffron in water, with a little alum and gum arabic.

Sympathetic Ink, a liquor with which a person may write, without the letters appearing, till some means be taken to render them legible.

Of this kind are the glutinous juices of plants, or any other thick and viscid fluids, provided they have no remarkable colours themselves; for being written on white paper, nothing will appear, till some fine powder of any coloured earth is thrown over the paper, whereby the letters become legible: the reason of this is evident, as the powder sticks only to the letters formed by the invisible but viscid liquor.

Another sort of sympathetic inks are made of infusions, the matter of which easily burns to a charcoal: thus if a scruple of sal armoniac be dissolved in two ounces of fair water, letters written therewith will be invisible till held before the fire; for the sal armoniac being burnt to a charcoal, by a heat not strong enough to scorch the paper, the letters are thereby rendered visible.

Another sort of sympathetic ink is made of a solution of lead in vinegar, and a lixivium of lime and ornament; for if a letter be written with the former, nothing will appear: but to conceal the affair still more, some different subject may be written above it, with a black ink made of burnt cork and gum-water; then, if a piece of cotton, wetted with the said lixivium, be rubbed over the paper, the sentence that was visible will disappear, and the invisible one before written with the solution of lead will be seen in its place very black and strong.