552 
MERCURY. 
Idria, says a French mineralogist, is a little town, 
irregularly built on both sides of a river, which 
runs through a very deep valley surrounded by 
mountains composed of lime-stone. In this valley 
there are large beds of black slate, which contain 
the mercury either in the state of quicksilver or 
cinnabar. The mine is w r orked to a very consi- 
derable depth, the principal shafts being sunk more 
than a hundred fathoms ; and it is said to be suf- 
ficiently productive to furnish all Europe and Ame- 
rica with quicksilver, if they w^ere not restrained 
from extracting it in order to keep up the price. 
The extraction is limited to three thousand quintals 
per annum, in wdiich quantity there is about a hun- 
dred quintals of native mercury. This rich mine is 
said to have been discovered in the year 1497; but 
the mountain where the metal was first found is 
now exhausted and abandoned. 
In France we find mines of mercury situated in 
the mountains which make part of the Vosges, and 
which include an extent of country of seven or 
eight leagues in breadth, and ten or twelve in 
length, stretching from south to north. They are 
in general composed of a reddish brown sand-stone, 
running in almost horizontal layers. The mines 
are numerous, and yield annually seventy thousand 
pounds weight of mercury. The mineral is either 
disposed in masses scattered here and there, or in 
very irregular veins. Liquid bitumen has been no- 
ticed in these mines, and likewise bituminous fossil 
wood. 
