AND LOWER EGYPT. If $ 



alone cannot answer the purpose, till, after they 

 have reduced it to a very subtile powder, mixing half 

 as ?nuch quicklime as rusma, they dilute it in some 

 vessel with water*. Thus, the rusma of Bello- 

 nius does not furnish a depilatory by itself, and it 

 contains some caustic substance, which, mixed 

 with lime, communicates that property to it. And 

 this presumption is confirmed by the experiment 

 of Citizen Valmont de Bomare, who, having re- 

 ceived from* Constantinople some small morsels of 

 mineral rusma, perceived that, when thrown on 

 burning coals, a vapour immediately exhaled 

 from it, which led him to suspect that it is a cal- 

 chilis mineralized by sulphur and arsenic -f. The 

 same naturalist says farther, that this depilatory is 

 very rare in France, and sold there for its weight 

 in gold. But how is it possible to reconcile this 

 scarcity, this high price, with the abundance of 

 rusma in Turkey ? How could a thing so common 

 have remained unknown till now ? It is presented 

 in all the bathing-houses; and it would have been 

 easy for Frenchmen, who, in the great ports of the 

 Levant, take pleasure in frequenting them, to have 

 procured some of it to send into France. But it 

 was that, conformably to the observation ofBello- 

 nius, ill understood, and altered in many works 

 on the materia medica, they would not see the 



* Observ. book iii. ch. 33. 



| Diet, of Nat. Hist, artic. Rusma. 



t 1 rusma 



