270 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

 ALKALIS, (CONTINUED). 



POTASH PEARLASH AMERICAN POTASH OTHER 



ALKALINE PLANTS. 



POTASH is said to be obtained from the ashes of 

 almost every plant which grows at a distance from 

 the sea. This distance, however, need not be consi- 

 derable: in the Maremme of Tuscany, where the 

 best potash is produced in great quantities, trees, 

 brushwood, or underwood, growing close to the 

 margin of the Mediterranean, are used for this pur- 

 pose. In Sicily, Calabria, and other parts of the 

 kingdom of Naples, potash manufactories are gene- 

 rally established near the coast, and supplied with 

 materials growing on the spot. In some of these 

 places fine forest-trees are reduced to ashes to fur- 

 nish potash. This, as we are informed by a gentle- 

 man who has travelled in that rarely-visited part of 

 Italy, was particularly the case on the coast near 

 Viesti, in the district of Monte Gargano, where a 

 Neapolitan proprietor, interdicted by the blind policy 

 of his government from exporting the timber that 

 grew on his estate, established a potash manufactory 

 and consumed his trees to supply it. The directors 

 of these works were Tuscans, who pursued the same 

 plan as that followed in the Maremme. They burned 

 down the wood where it grew, which was often very 

 near the Adriatic, and removed the ashes in hand- 

 barrows. 



Potash is obtained in other places besides the south 



