The Woad Plant and its Dye

Abstract

BRITAIN has always been fortunate in its amateur scientific workers; men, by no means real amateurs in science, who find delight in the intervals of a busy life in following seriously some definite line of investigation. Of this category was the late Dr. Hurry, who, in the midst of a very crowded career as a medical practitioner in Reading, was yet able to study systematically and as a most careful monographer to render signal service to knowledge. Quite why he chose to tell the story of the woad plant is not revealed, but he had a lifelong interest in economic botany and at his home he established an educational garden and museum. The woad plant and its famous blue dye are studied from an international point of view, and the book aims both at giving a comprehensive account of the industry in several countries and emphasising so many other points of view that it becomes a contribution to our knowledge of the social and industrial life of the Middle Ages.

The Woad Plant and its Dye.

By the late Dr. Jamieson B. Hurry. Pp. xxviii + 328 + 17 plates. (London: Oxford University Press, 1930.) 21s. net.