or **LACMUS**, in the arts, is a blue pigment, formed from *archil*. It is brought from Holland at a cheap rate; but may be prepared by adding quick quick lime and putrified urine, or spirit of urine distilled from lime, to the archil previously bruised by grinding. The mixture having cooled, and the fluid suffered to evaporate, becomes a mass of the consistence of a paste, which is laid on boards to dry in square lumps. It is only used in miniature paintings, and cannot be well depended on, because the least approach of acid changes it instantly from blue to red. The best litmus is very apt to change and fly.

**Litter** (lechus), a kind of vehicle borne upon shafts; anciently esteemed the most easy and gentle way of carriage. Du-Cange derives the word from the barbarous Latin lechteria "straw or bedding for beasts." Other will rather have it come from lechus "bed;" there being ordinarily a quilt and a pillow to a litter in the same manner as to a bed.

Pliny calls the litter the traveller's chamber: it was much in use among the Romans, among whom it was borne by slaves kept for that purpose; as it still continues to be in the east, where it is called palanquin.—The Roman lectica, made to be borne by four men, was called tetraphorum; that borne by six hexaphorum; and that borne by eight octaphorum.

The invention of litters, according to Cicero, was owing to the kings of Bithynia: in the time of Tiberius they were become very frequent at Rome, as appears from Seneca; and even slaves themselves were borne in them, though never by more than two persons, whereas men of quality had six or eight.