62 Copper. 
they are immediately deposited in a comer of the cellar 
on sticks ranged on the floor. They are placed in an up- 
right position, one leaning against the other ; and at the 
end of two or three days they are moistened, by taking 
them up in handfuls and immersing them in water in 
earthen pans. They are deposited q :ite wet in their for- 
mer position, and left there for seven or eight days ; afier 
which they are once or twice immersed again. This im- 
mersion and drying are renewed six or eight times, every 
seven or eight days. As the plates formerly were put in* 
to wine, these immersions were called one wine , two wines y 
three wines , according to the number of times. By this 
process the plates swell up, the green is nourished, and a 
coat of verdigris is formed on all their surfaces, which 
may be easily detached by scraping them with a knife. 
Each jar furnishes live or six pounds of verdigris at 
each operation. It is then called fresh verdigris, moist 
verdigris, &c. This verdigris is sold in that state by the 
manufacturers to people who dry it for foreign exporta- 
tion. In this first state it is only a paste, which is care- 
fully pounded in large wooden troughs, and then put into 
bags of white leather, a foot in height and ten inches in 
diameter. These bags are exposed to the air or the sun, 
and are left in that state till the verdigris has acquired the 
proper degree of dryness. 7 By this operation it decreases 
about fifty per cent, more or less according to its primi- 
tive state. It is said to stand proof by the knife, when the 
point of that instrument pushed against a cake of verdigris 
through the skin cannot penetrate it. 
The plates of copper which have been already used 
are again employed for the same operation, till they are 
almost completely consumed. Instead of heating them 
artificially, as above mentioned, they are sometimes ex- 
posed only to the sun. The same plates will serve some- 
times for ten years, but they are often worn out in two or 
