SILVER. 129 
Lustre unmetallic, of crystals adamantine; often dull. 
Color bright red to brownish red, and brownish black. 
Streak scarlet-red. Subtransparent to nearly opaque. H.= 
2-2°5. G.==85-9. Sectile. 
Composition. Ug S,=Sulphur 13°8, mercury 86°2. It 
often contains impurities. The lier ore, or hepatic cinna- 
bar, contains some carbon and clay, and has a brownish 
streak and color. ‘The pure variety volatilizes entirely be- 
fore the blowpipe. 
Diff. Distinguished from red oxide of iron and chromate 
of lead by vaporizing before the blowpipe ; from realgar by 
giving off on charcoal no alliaceous fumes. 
Obs. Cinnabar is the ore from which the principal part 
of the mercury of commerce is obtained. It is when pure 
identical with the pigment vermilion. It occurs mostly in 
connection with siliceous, talcose and argillaceous slates, or 
other stratified deposits, both the most ancient and those of 
more recent date. The mineral is too volatile to be expected 
in any abundance in proper igneous or crystalline rocks, yet 
has been found sparingly in granite. | 
The localities are mentioned beyond. 
Metacinnabarite is the same compound with cinnabar, but differs in 
crystallization ; it is from Redington Mine, Lake County, California. 
Guadalcazarite, of Mexico, is Hg 8 in which alittle of the sulphur 
is replaced by selenium. 
Calomel or Horn Quicksilver. A tough, sectile mercury chloride, of 
a light yellowish or grayish color, and adamantine lustre, translucent 
or subtranslucent, crystallizing in secondaries to a square prism. 
H.=—1-2. G.=6°48. It contains 15:1 per cent. of chlorine, and 84:9 
of mercury. 
lodic Mercury. A reddish-brown ore, from Mexico. 
Tiemannite. A dark steel-gray mercury selenide, from the Hartz, 
and the vicinity of Clear Lake, California. 
Coloradoite. A greyish black mercury telluride, with G.=8-627. 
from the Keystone and Mountain Lion Mines, Colorado. (Genth.) 
Magnolite. A mercurous tellurate, Hg O,Te, from Magnolia dis- 
trict, Colorado. ; 
General Remarxs.—The following are the regions of the principal 
mines of mercury. At Idria, in Austria (discovered in 1497), where 
the ore is a dark bituminous cinnabar distributed through a blackish 
shale or slate, containing some native mercury ; at Almaden, in Spain, 
near the frontier of Estremadura, in the province of La Mancha, in 
argillaceous beds and grit rock, which are intersected by dikes of 
‘“‘black porphyry ” and granite—mines mentioned by Pliny as afford- 
ing vermilion to the Greeks, 700 years before the Christian era; in 
the Palatinate on the Rhine ; in Hungary; Sweden; several points in 
France ; Ripa, in Tuscany; in Shensi, in China; at Arqueros, in 
