224 FIRESIDE SCIENCE. 



other known agent. The popular prejudice, engen- 

 dered by designing quacks, against the use of mer- 

 cury in medicine, is not founded upon justice or 

 intelligence. 



The amount of quicksilver which the various 

 mines of the world are capable of furnishing is very 

 large, much larger than is demanded for any 

 purposes to which it is at present applied. The 

 quicksilver mines of California alone could furnish 

 fifty times more than is consumed in the whole 

 world, and the same may be said of the old Alma- 

 den mines of Spain. The discovery of a new 

 quicksilver mine in the United States, no matter 

 of what extent or richness, would possess but little 

 more value than that of a common clay bed, if it 

 was attempted to be worked in competition with 

 existing mines in California and Spain. The price 

 would immediately run down to a point so low 

 that its extraction must cease. At present the 

 quicksilver trade of the world is substantially an 

 armed truce between Spain and California. By 

 a kind of tacit understanding between the con- 

 trollers of the products from the two sources of 

 supply, Spain is allowed to furnish the London 

 market and nearly the whole of Europe. Until 

 within a few years it had the great Chinese market 

 also, but California, by adroit management, has 

 driven Spain out of the Celestial Empire, and now 



