Page:The History of Ink.djvu/37

Rh manner as now, 1120 years before the Christian Era; but, only used it, at that time, to blacken incised characters. Ink was termed by the ancient Latin authors atramentum scriborium, or librarium, to distinquish it from atramentum sutorium or calchantum. It was made of the soot of resin, or pounded charcoal, and other substances, mixed with gum, and not, like ours, of vitriol, gall-nuts, alum, &c. The earliest positive mention of ink is perhaps the passage in Jeremiah, in the Vulgate, "Ego scribebam in volumine, atramento."