76 
ON WHITE LEAD. 
mentation, produces both heat, steam, and carbonic acid. 
This method being that which is chiefly pursued in this coun- 
try, we shall not enter into technical details respecting it. 
The English substitute fermenting tan for dung, otherwise 
the process is the same. The Kremser white is produced by 
a variation of the same process. It is conducted in different 
parts of Austria, particularly at Klagenfurth, in Carinthia, 
and the lead, which is very pure, is obtained from Bleiberg, 
in Carinthia. Sheets of lead are hung in small wooden 
troughs, in the bottom of which is poured mixtures, varying 
in different establishments, sometimes equal parts of wine 
lees and vinegar, &c. The troughs, to the number of ninety, 
more or less, are placed in a chamber, each one closed up, 
and the whole chamber heated by a furnace to about the tem- 
perature of 100° Fahrenheit. If the heat be too high, carbo- 
nic acid escapes, and less white lead is the result. It is ge- 
nerally conceded by the best judges that the best Carinthian 
white lead is superior to all other kinds. 
Now, if we suppose that twenty-three out of twenty-four 
hundred weight of lead are converted into white lead, then 
for these twenty-three hundred weight may be employed 
nearly 1300 lb. of vinegar, of such a strength that it would 
convert 128 lbs, of lead into neutral acetate. It is true that 
in different establishments the relative quantities of vinegar 
and lead vary, but still the variation is an immaterial point, 
for the former is rarely more than the fractional part of the 
lead employed; thus a pint, or a half pint of comparatively 
weak acid is used to three pounds of lead. It is, therefore, 
clearly evident that the former theory, that vinegar both 
yielded oxygen and carbonic acid, or either one, to form 
white lead, is either wholly without foundation, or else its 
service in this respect would produce but a very small part 
of the white lead which is actually obtained; or suppose that 
a bed of 6,000 pots, of ten tier, and 600 in a tier, or layer, 
contained one pint of vinegar, and three pounds of lead in 
each, and that the pint of acid contained one ounce of dry 
acetic acid; the whole bed would then contain 15,000 lbs. of 
