Harry Potter’s Morning Light

   Chapter 2624 Wind and Flowers (3)

In British slang, buff means troubles, and loveinthebuff means love troubles, but in the United States it has other meanings, such as inthebuff means not an inch of thread, and it also represents light yellow, because this slang is an abbreviation for buffalo , in the 16th and 17th centuries, the word usually referred to a kind of cowhide that was abundant in North America.

  It was thicker than deerskin and was suitable for replacing metal armor, so the thick "buff" coats of this time were standard for European soldiers. By the time of the American Revolution, George Washington, who had fought in the Seven Years' War, also served in the British Army wearing the traditional scarlet color during the Seven Years' War.

But in the summer of 1775, at the Second Continental Congress, Washington put on a brand-new uniform of "light yellow" and blue and appeared at the venue. At that time, "the four seats were stunning", and soon light yellow became a new life. One of the symbols of America.

However, due to the excessive hunting of humans, the bison that used to be seen everywhere in the American grasslands gradually disappeared. By the beginning of the 20th century, there were only 21 left in North America. At that time, President Roosevelt issued a decree to remove the bison and other rare animals. Placed in the national park, when Newt Scamander returned to the United States to send back the ptarmigan, you could see a huge herd of bison appearing on the North American grasslands.

   However, the North American Rem cattle are "really" extinct. Rem cattle are often mixed with bison herds. They are larger than ordinary cattle, and their hides are also golden, making them easier to target for hunters. By the time the wizards arrived, the Rem Bull was basically dead. The Ifamoni School of Witchcraft and Wizardry kept a large number of anatomical drawings and specimens, but there were no live Rem cattle, and Scamander searched all over North America and could not find it.

   There are still a small amount of Rem cattle in South America, but the export of cattle blood is very strict, and the powerful stimulation potions needed by Aurors are in urgent need of "large amounts" of Rem cattle blood, especially during Grindelwald's activities around the world. It was only when Rem's blood was really imitated, that Grindelwald had already fallen, and it happened that Voldemort in the United Kingdom had risen, so the United Kingdom became the main consumer of imitation Rem's blood.

The wealth of the   Smith family has a lot to do with their ability to trade potions, materials, and stocks. Many members of this family are members of the Fairy Finance and Red-Nosed Wizard Investors Alliance.

   In addition, there are many people who hold important positions in the Ministry of Magic. They say that it is a family gathering. In fact, most of the people from the Ministry of Magic and the financial circle are here. There were also Muggles mixed in, and they were easy to spot, after all wizards were dressed for Halloween.

  The gathering of so many people is certainly impossible to hold indoors, although the "ancestral home" of the Smith family is a 17th-century castle.

  The rain the previous two days made the temperature cooler, and the grass was not so muddy. Tent after tent was erected directly on the lawn. Children rode toy brooms to chase in the air, while adults chatted while drinking drinks in the shade.

   "Dean!" cried Sally Smith, "why are you here?"

  Pomona looked at Hufflepuff, who was attending the sorting ceremony with Harry Potter, holding an alcohol-smelling "juice" in her hand.

   "Come to the party." Pomona smiled and said, "Aren't you welcome?"

   "Of course not." Sally saw Cedric following behind her and smiled shyly. "You are welcome to our party."

   "What's the fun?" asked Pomona.

   "Look!" Sally pointed in a direction where a Ferris wheel was erected. "Uncle Dominic set up an amusement park there."

  Pomona put his hand on his eyebrows to cover the sun, looked at those "toys", muttered "rich man" viciously in his heart, turned and asked Cedric "Do you want to play?"

  Cedric shook his head with a smile, obviously he had no interest in merry-go-rounds, even if their wings moved like real Pegasus.

   "What else?" Pomona asked Sally.

   "Come on, I'll show you around." Sally said briskly, "Sister Weird is here today."

  Listening to a concert is not what Pomona wants to go to, but she really doesn't know where to inquire about Herbaz Smith's inheritance.

   But what she didn't expect was that she met an unexpected person on the way, Snape was talking to Zacharis Smith's father.

Tomorrow is going to be the match, of course, the weighing ceremony will be held tomorrow to be precise. After the weighing, Snape will draw lots with Damocles Belby to decide the order of drinking the potion, and then they will The potions are arranged according to the order, and Snape "should not" run out and "socialize" at this time.

   "What's the matter, Dean?" Cedric followed Pomona's line of sight.

   "It's alright." She said blankly, continuing to "hang out" with Sally.

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Later, after the party, Pomona and Severus went to Fengya's clothing store in Diagon Alley to buy clothes, scaring the Snape-educated clerk who had just graduated, until they When paying, she looked unacceptable, but professionally said "Welcome to come again".

She chose a bachelor's robe for him, instead of the original medieval "bat cloak", and the color was no longer black, but a very dark green, which could not be seen in the dark underground, but could be seen in the sun .

   His robe also became a long coat, also invisible in the dark, it was actually a very deep blue, it was impregnated with layers of indigo, which could not be washed, only dry-cleaned and ironed.

  In the 20th century when there were a lot of synthetic dyes, natural indigo cost more than 10 times as much as synthetic dyes, and it sometimes took on a greenish glow. That is to say, although Snape is still black, it is "colorful" black, which is Pomona's best effort to improve his dressing taste.

  Indigo is derived from the ancient Greek word "indikon", which means imported from India. It was once listed as a top luxury together with Tyre purple, which represents the emperor. Caesar once appeared in the arena of ancient Rome wearing purple silk, which led the Romans to love silk and purple, but purple is extracted from shells, the process is complicated and difficult to extract, and it is accompanied by a The mixed smell of urine is very pungent. At that time, the ancient Romans did not have the technology to synthesize ammonia, so they could only use ammonia in urine.

The popularity of Tyre violet is bad news for the snails that produce the pigment. It takes about 250,000 conch shells to make 30 grams of the dye, so that an artificial landscape has been formed on the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea. composition of conch snails.

  The silk of Tyre purple is measured in grams and calculated in gold. In the late period of ancient Rome, even the emperor could not afford it, so Justinian sent spies to find a way to make silk.

  13 barrels of natural indigo stems can extract about 1 barrel of indigo, and the ancient Egyptians often used it to dye linen and trim, decorate mummies, and indigo robes can be seen in the tomb paintings of pharaohs and sacrifices. It was just as expensive in Roman times, and trade routes were a big factor in the high price of indigo.

Indigo makes people feel cheap mainly because there are too many artificial blue dyes, and the early jeans were blue. Indigo dyes do not require dyes such as alum like other dyes. They can be dyed directly, and the United States happens to plant them. Lots of indigo, with which to dye hardwearing jeans and sell them to gold diggers.

   The gold digger was destitute before digging for gold. He had no money to change clothes that were not wear-resistant. Denim trousers also needed to be wear-resistant. The fabric was first used for the sails of Genoa merchant ships.

   Napoleon's 800% punitive tariffs on the US did not have the same impact on US farmers as the UK's abolition of indigo subsidies, mainly because the "neutral countries" did not impose punitive tariffs on the US.

  If Tyre purple was gold and indigo was silver, wealthy Rome would be willing to buy a pound of indigo for twenty dinars, which was already fifteen times the average daily wage at that time.

   Its price was so high that some people used pigeon dung to fool people at that time. Now no one uses pigeon dung to fake it, but some people use Prussian blue, and people with poor eyesight can't distinguish between lapis lazuli, indigo and Prussian blue.

  In the United States, whenever the economy is down, the sales of lipstick will surge, because Americans think that lipstick is a cheap consumer product, and buying it can satisfy people's still strong desire to consume.

But this cheap lipstick uses synthetic pigments, and high-end lipsticks use cochineal, which is a small insect that lives on cacti. Before and after laying eggs, the females will gather together and lay red eggs. This batch of Red eggs are of the best quality, followed by adults, about 70,000 worms can extract a liter of dye, and an acre of cactus can produce 200 liters of product. That is to say, there are 14 million bugs in each acre, and they are collected three times a year.

Because this kind of work is too repetitive, a large number of farmers use wine to drown their sorrows. They will drink a kind of tequila wine, which is not too high or too high, only 6-8 degrees, and it will be spicy when the distillation technology is brought to South America. Mouth of tequila.

  Tlaxcala is the main source of cochineal insects, and it is the second largest source of finance for the Spanish treasury after the Galen sailing ship in Veracruz.

  The Spaniards went to great lengths to keep the cochineal a secret, releasing news that the red color was obtained from extruding plant seeds, and banning the export of the cochineal.

For about two centuries, Britain and France tried to spy on the secrets and sent spies, but it wasn't until the first half of the 18th century, when Anthony Leeuwenhoek discovered the six-legged cochineal under a microscope, the French Botanist Nicolas Joseph Thierry de Menonville, posing as a doctor in Catalonia, secretly infiltrated Oaxaca, another cochineal origin, where he mastered the breeding and production of cochineal After the secret, the insects were brought to Santo Domingo, where they were cultivated in the Botanical Garden of Port-au-Prince. After his death, the botanical garden was in ruins, and the precious cochineal insects brought back by the Royal Society at great cost suffered the same fate. They were cleared from the cactus by ladybugs, the nemesis of aphids. Only the Dutch succeeded in realizing cochineal in Java. insect production.

In 1787, the Dutch Hope Bank, which specialized in foreign lending and investment, was under the leadership of Henry Hope, who judged that the cochineal harvest would be poor and that the reserves in Europe would be low, so he bought thousands of tons together with the Barings Bank. of cochineal insects.

He used 2 million florins, sourced from Marseille, Rouen, Hamburg, Italy and St. Petersburg, and stored mainly in Cadiz, London and Amsterdam, but this caused a disaster, because the reserves were too large, far more than Hope's imagination, the bank suffered heavy losses and was on the verge of bankruptcy.

   At this time, the British and Anglo-Dutch Bank Group rescued him, and cochineal was widely used by the British army, such as dyeing the red uniforms of the Royal Guard, but this time the situation was different from the last time.

  Hope's warehouse in Thames Harbour, London was burned down. Barings Bank has withdrawn from the Louisiana acquisition. If Hope Bank wants to recover its losses and not go bankrupt, it can only continue.

As long as Napoleon sells Louisiana, not only can the 26 million francs of grain borrowings be repaid, the United States can continue to move westward, open up more cotton fields, and provide cotton for European industry, the "white gold", which has been growing. The cotton index will also fall.

   While American farmers need loans to expand and build their farms, they are not as lucky as Jacob, who will meet a wizard and give him his silver eggs as collateral.

  If Jacob was a greedy man, Fantastic Beasts wouldn't be cute when he saw those silver eggs.

   "Lay your eggs, you stupid bird." As Jack climbed up the magic vines to the sky, he heard the giant say to the hen that only lays golden eggs.

   But Jacob wasn't like that, he had a good time with the Fantastic Beasts.

   He doesn't look like a World War I veteran by any means.

  Georgianna touched her lower lip subconsciously while listening to Gaston Martin's narration. She had put on lipstick and then smeared her lip print with a handkerchief and threw it to the ground.

   Could that red liquid be related to cochineal?

   Or is it related to cacti? She remembered that a rare cactus was used for the wolf poison drug, and animals didn't care so much. There was no difference between ladybugs eating aphids and cochineal beetles.

But she has to think about whether to use lipstick in the future. During "Hot Kiss", when she thinks of the feeling that her mouth is covered with insects, it affects her mood. Although she doesn't mind that there is leech juice in the potion when she drinks it, Is that a "drug" after all?

   (end of this chapter)