CAMPHOR, OR CAMPHIRE 677 



Eaptiste Porte. It is employed for the production of photographic pictures, and will 

 be fully described in the article devoted to that art. See PHOTOGRAPHY. 



GABIES. Slips of lead employed by glaziers in glazing church or cottage windows 

 in the olden style. They were formerly called ' lattices," and hence leaded windows 

 were termed lattice windows. 



CAMLET or C AlVXBXiET. A light stuff, formerly much used for female ap- 

 parol. It is made of long wool, hard spun, sometimes mixed in the loom with 

 cotton or linen yarn. Several fabrics of the same kind are now introduced under other 

 names. 



CAlVKPEACHV WOOD (Hamatoxylon Campechianum). Logwood brought from 

 the bay of that name. See LOGWOOD. 



C-arHPHEWE. The radicle of camphor; various hydrocarbons isomeric or poly- 

 meric with oil of turpentine are so called. See Watts's ' Dictionary of Chemistry.' 



CATMPHINE. Rectified oil of turpentine is sold in the shops under this name 

 for burning in lamps. Crude oil of turpentine is redistilled with potash, and then 

 with water, and lastly, to secure its perfect purity, with chloride of calcium. The oil 

 thus prepared forms a limpid colourless liquid ; its specific gravity is about 0*870, 

 but it is subject to some slight variations; C J H 4 appears fairly to represent this, 

 and several other similar oils. It is very inflammable, burning with a bright red 

 flame, and without a proper supply of air it evolves much dense smoke, hence peculiar 

 lamps (Camphine lamps) are required. Where it has, from exposure to air, ab- 

 sorbed oxygen, and become resinified, it is unfit for purposes of illumination. Such 

 camphine very rapidly clogs the wick with a dense carbon, and is liable to the thick 

 black smoke, which is so objectionable in the camphine lamps if they are not properly 

 attended to. 



To purify old camphine, it must be redistilled from carbonate of potash, or some 

 similarly active substance to deprive it of its resin. See LAMPS. 



CAMPHOXiE. One of the oils obtained from coal-tar. Mansfield gave this name 

 to the oils cumole and cymole, which boil at 284 and 330 F., when collected 

 together. The specific gravity of crude camphole ranges fromO'88 toO'98, and the less 

 volatile portions frequently contain naphthaline, which raises their specific gravity. 

 This substance, either alone or mixed with pyroxylic spirit, is applicable for burning 

 in lamps or for dissolving resins, as a substitute for oil of turpentine. 



CA1VIPHOR, or CAMPHIRE. (Camphre, Fr. ; Kampher, Ger.) This im- 

 mediate product of vegetation was known to the Arabs under the -names of kamphur&nd 

 kaphur, whence the name camphora. Camphor was not known to the ancients ; it 

 is first mentioned by Avicenna, and Serapion calls it cdfur. Symeon Seth, who lived 

 in the eleventh century, describes it. It is found in a great many plants, and is 

 secreted, in purity, by several laurels ; it occurs combined with the essential oils of 

 many of the Labiata ; but it is extracted, for manufacturing purposes, only from the 

 Laurus camphora, or Camphora officinarum, a member of the Laurel order, which 

 abounds in China and Japan, as well as from a tree which grows in Sumatra and 

 Borneo, called, in the country, Kapour barros, from the name of the place where it is 

 most common. This Sumatra camphor is the produce of the Dryobalanops camphora. 

 The camphor exists, ready formed, in these vegetables, between the wood and the 

 bark ; but it does not exude spontaneously. On cleaving the tree which produces 

 the Sumatra camphor masses of pure camphor are found in the trunk. Sumatra 

 camphor is not imported into this country, as it is eagerly bought up by the Chinese, 

 who prize it highly. 



To prepare camphor the wood of the laurus is cut into small pieces, and put with 

 plenty of water into large iron boilers, which are covered with an earthen capital or 

 dome, lined within with rice straw. As the water boils, the camphor rises with the 

 steam, and attaches itself as a sublimate to the stalks, under the form of granulations 

 of a grey colour. In this state it is picked off the straw, and packed up for exporta- 

 tion to Europe. 



Formerly .Venice held the monopoly of refining camphor, but now France, England, 

 Holland, and Germany refine it for their own markets. All the purifying processes 

 proceed on the principle that camphor is volatile at the temperature of 400 F. 

 The substance is mixed, as intimately as possible, with 2 per cent, of quicklime, and 

 the mixture is introduced into a large bottle made of thin uniform glass, sunk in a 

 sand-bath. The fire is slowly raised till the whole vessel becomes heated, and then 

 its upper part is gradually laid bare in proportion as the sublimation goes on. Much 

 attention and experience are required to make this operation succeed. If the tem- 

 perature be raised too. slowly, the neck of the bottle might be filled with camphor 

 before the heat had acquired the proper subliming pitch ; and, if too quickly, the 

 whole contents might be exploded. If the operation be carried on languidly, and the 

 heat of the upper part of the bottle be somewhat under the melting-point of camphor, 



