Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1896 edition. Excerpt: ...through the rock; the common ore is cinnabar. Native Amalgam is a rather rare mineral containing mercury and silver, but in very varying amounts. Cinnabar. Mercury sulphide, HgS. Cinnabar, the sulphide of mercury, and sometimes called natural vermilion, is found in masses of a fine red color, and sometimes also in small rhombohedral or prismatic crystals. The hardness is 2 to 2.5, and the specific gravity is about 8, or above that of metallic iron (7.8). The great weight of a specimen cannot escape the observer and is a striking character; in some cases, however, if the cinnabar is not a pure solid mass, but only scattered through a light clayey gangue, the density of the whole may be much lower than 8. The luster is adamantine and the color bright cochinealred, sometimes becoming dull and dark; the streak is scarlet; crystals are usually perfectly transparent. The formula for mercury sulphide, HgS, gives the percentage composition: Sulphur 13.8, mercury 86.2--100. If heated on charcoal, a piece of pure cinnabar is volatilized entirely; if anything is left behind, it is only the gangue. In the closed tube it is also sublimed entire, but here it collects again in the cold part of the tube above as a black ring of sulphide of mercury, which has the same composition as the original mineral, for the chemist knows both a black and a red sulphide. In the open tube, if heated very slowly, so as to avoid forming a black ring--in other words, so as to give the sulphur time to oxidize (go off as S03)--a ring of metallic mercury is formed in the cold part of the tube (see also p. 148). Cinnabar is mined at Almaden in Spain, Idria in Carniola, also at New Almaden and other points in California, and less abundantly elsewhere. COPPER. Copper is one of...
