Toyo Mee ee 
“upon the salts. This process is carried on till 
Manufacture eget and Pearl Ashes. 305 
its a most elegant silercen of liquid fire. It resembles 
exactly melted iron, and exhibits the same appearance when 
the process, if a candle or lighted torch, be br 
tact, or nearly so, with the surface, < gaseous I 
ing over it inflames, and ove 
a bluish flame, like hydro. 
This substance, naw 
4 of fusion, is poured by 
n pots. or kettles, and al- 
kes when broken, exhib- 
it a fracture like loaf sugar, Palas of a granulated structure. 
he appearance of the fracture, as to colour, is different in 
different parts of the mass; exhibiting in its course every 
shade of the rainbow, but less concentrated and glowing. 
This is the pot ash of commerce. It is more deliquescent 
than pearl ashes, and I should think more caustic. Durin 
the evaporation of the ley, a salt is precipitated, of a grey- 
ish colour, shaped much like crystals of sulphate of magne- 
sia. This the boilers call nitre, and most of them are care- 
ful to scrape it out from the kettles by means of ladles, and 
to replace it on the leeches with the ashes as eid suppose 
it to retard the process of pe oe 
Ifit be intended to make the pearl ash, — obtained 
by evaporation, which in the loagusgs of the conan i cal- 
Jed “black salts,” is taken from the kettle od 
originally black becomes of a handsome white. The mass Is 
kept i in agitation by means of an ironrod. The substance 
yed in the books as potash, is the substance termed 
by the manufacturer, “ black salts,” in which state, so far 
as I know, it is never seenin market. It is the substance [ 
have described, which is exported from this country to Eu- 
rope. 
Vor. VIII.—No. 2. 3o 
