MADDER, or Dyer’s Madder, is the root of Rubia tinctorum, I.., and perhaps of R. peregrina, I., as well, both being European; but R. cordifolia, I.., and perhaps Muηgista, Roxb., a native of the mountains of Nepal, Bengal, Japan, &c., supply the Indian madder or manjit (see Pickering, Chrom Hist, of Pl., 421; Drury, Useful Plants of India, 541). Rubia is a genus of about thirty species of the tribe Galieae of the order Rubiaceae, and much resembles the familiar Galiums, e.g., the lady’s bedstraw and cleaver of English hedges having similarly whorled leaves, but the parts of the flowers are in fives and not fours, while the fruit is somewhat fleshy. The sole British species is Rubia peregrina, I.. The use of madder appears to have been known from the earliest times, as cloth dyed with it has been found on the Egyptian mummies. It was the ∈p∈υ0∈δαvoy used for dyeing the cloaks of the Libyan women in the days of Herodotus (Herod., iv. 189). It is the ∈pυ0poδαι∕ov of Dioscorides, who speaks of its cultivation in Caria (iii. 160), and of Hippocrates (De Morl). Mul., i.), and the Rubia of Pliny (xix. 17), (see Pickering, p. 275). Rubia tinctorum, I.., a native of western Europe, &c., has been extensively cultivated in South Europe, France, where it is called garance, and Holland, and to a small extent in the United States. Large quantities have been imported into England from Smyrna, Trieste, Leghorn, &c. The cultivation, however, is decreasing since alizarin, the red colouring principle of madder, has been made artificially (see Alizarin). Madder was employed medicinally by the ancients and in the Middle Ages. Gerard, in 1597, speaks of it as having been cultivated in many gardens in his day, and describes its supposed many virtues (Herball, p. 960); ...