388 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1730. 



yellow, and blue colours; but that by first preparing, and then grinding it, it 

 becomes white. The same thing happens also to the red rock-salt of Salts- 

 burg, which being pounded becomes white. 



There is in these cuts, 4 fountains of salt-water, which they put into buckets 

 made of buffalo's skins sewed together, and draw it up by an engine worked 

 by horses, and convey it by pipes into the boilers, where they put the rock- 

 salt to dissolve, which they afterwards boil till it becomes like crystal. By 

 express mandates of the emperor, no one can sell that fossil salt, neither 

 can the Hungarians employ it for their own use, much less drive any trade in 

 it, but they boil it all, and export it into foreign countries. 



They find here also a sort of crystallized salt, like the crust adhering to the 

 pipes of wood: the miners call it salt of crystal; it is very white and transparent, 

 but this appeared to us, nothing else but salt falling drop by drop in its passage 

 in the pipes, and so crystallizing, which they easily also separate. 



But what is most curious and remarkable in these subterraneous fosses, are 

 the flowers of salt, which grow as the beard of a goat, with this difference 

 only, that these are much whiter, and much finer. One cannot enough admire 

 these vegetables, yet one cannot find them in all the cuts, nor at all times, 

 but they appear and grow according to the temperature of the seasons, which 

 in those parts is very wholesome, and without any thing noxious. These sort 

 of plumes of salt are very brittle, they met also in moist places, and dissolve 

 into an evaporated oil, but are nevertheless the most pure salt, the finest, the 

 most acid, the most white, and most beautiful ; so that it is not without reason 

 they have given it the name of fiower of salt. 



The salt of Soowar is esteemed the best of all Hungary, the greatest part of 

 which they export into Silesia, Moravia, and Bohemia, and the Hungarians 

 dare not use any of it themselves, under pain of banishment. They make 

 every year about 50,000 tun, every tun containing 2,68lb. but by an ordonnance 

 of his Imperial Majesty, they will henceforward boil about 100,000 tun, which 

 they will export as the other. 



We saw at Neusol, a statue of rock-salt, as large as life, which serves as 

 the barometer of Neusol; for when it begins to sweat, or grow moist, it pre- 

 rain, or wet weather; but when it is dry, it indicates settled fair. 



The Natural Historij of Cochineal ; being an Account of a Book, entitled, His- 

 loij'e naturelle de la Cochinelle justifice par des Documens cmtlientiqnes. Amster- 

 dam, ] 7 29. By W. Rutty, M.D. Sec. R. S. N'' 413, p. ■2(34. 



[The history of cochineal being now well known, it is of course, unnecessary 



