Puseyite

“ Our road lay over the ridges, at the foot of the mountains, along the eastern side of the plain. The soil over which we passed was thin. There was much rock on the surface, and in many places there were wide-spread masses of a very coarse puddingstone, that appeared to have once formed a huge bed of water-worn rock, bowlders, and pebbles, and owing to some cementing matter which had come over it, had become a solid rock. As we approached Baalbec this rock discontinued, and gave place to a very thick stratum of massy limestone of a peculiar kind, which is mainly used in the walls of Baalbec. ”

“ Pumices are most abundant and most typically developed from acid rocks; for which reason they usually accompany obsidians, in fact in Lipari and elsewhere the base of a lava flow may be black obsidan while the upper portion is a snow white pumice.
Small crystals of various minerals occur in many pumices; the commonest are felspar, augite, hornblende and zircon. If they are abundant they greatly diminish the economic value of the rock, as they are hard and wear down more slowly than the glassy material; consequently they produce scratches. ”

“ Phosphorite, when occurring in large deposits, is a mineral of much economic value for conversion into the super phosphate largely used as a fertilizing agent. Many of the impure substances thus utilized are not strictly phosphorite, but pass under such names as “rock-phosphate,” or, when nodular, as “coprolite” (q.v.) , even if not of true coprolitic origin. The ultimate source of these mineral phosphates may be referred in most cases to the apatite widely distributed in crystalline rocks. ”

“ It may also be obtained from animal substances, although a vegetable acid. If lime be added to water, distilled from these substances, a Prussiate of lime is formed; when, if an acid solution of iron be added to this mixture, common Prussian blue (or Prussiate of iron) is precipitated. The acid may be obtained from Prussiate of potash, by making a strong solution of this salt, and then adding as much tartaric acid as will precipitate the potash, when the acid will be left in solution, which must be decanted and distilled. ”

“ In the western or oldest range, called the Peuquenes, are black calcareous clay-slates, rising to the height of nearly 14,000 feet above the sea, in which are shells of the genera Gryphæa, Turritella, Terebratula, and Ammonite. These rocks are supposed to be of the age of the central parts of the secondary series of Europe. They are penetrated and altered by dikes and mountain masses of a plutonic rock, which has the texture of ordinary granite, but rarely contains quartz, being a compound of albite and hornblende. ”

“ Many fossils are mineralized with pyrites, which has evidently been reduced by the action of decomposing organic matter on a solution of ferrous sulphate, or perhaps less directly on ferrous carbonate dissolved in water containing carbonic acid, in the presence of certain sulphates. A similar action probably explains the origin of pyrites and marcasite in coal and lignite, in clay and shales, and in limestone like chalk. ”

“ PUMICE is an extremely light and porous mineral, of somewhat fibrous texture, and of white, grey, reddish, brown, or black colour.
From the texture of this mineral, which is chiefly brought from the neighbourhood of volcanoes, some persons have imagined it to be asbestos decomposed by the action of fire. Its lightness is such that, placed in water, it will float.
To mechanics and other artists pumice stone is a very useful mineral. It is employed for cleansing and smoothing the surface of wood, leather, metal, stones, glass, and other substances ”

“ Aragonite.--This mineral, identical in composition with calc spar, but whose crystalline form is entirely different, occurs in this locality in veins hardly recognizable from the magnesite or dolomite, and running into dolomite. It is not abundant, and the veins are limited in extent; the only distinguishment it has from the dolomite, practically, is its fibrous structure, the fibers being brittle and very coarse. If examined with a powerful glass, they will be seen to be made up of modified long prisms. ”

“ If laid horizontally it is very strong, but if set on end its crystalline structure is a great source of weakness, and it splits from end to end. Neglect on the part of Roman builders of this important precaution in many cases caused a complete failure in the structure. This was notably the case in the rostra. (6) Pulvis Puteolanus (pozzolana) , so called from extensive beds of it at Puteoli—a volcanic product, which looks like red sandy earth, and lies in enormous beds under and round the city of Rome. ”

“ But when chemically combined with other substances, its power is in a great measure neutralized, and it becomes a valuable article, both to the chemist as a test, and to the physician as a medicine. The Prussiate of potash and iron will enable the chemist to discover nearly the whole of the metals when in solution, by the colours its combination produces. ”

“ Paul de Fénouillet, the chalky limestone becomes more crystalline and saccharoid as it approaches the granite, and loses all trace of the fossils which it previously contained in abundance. At some points, also, it becomes dolomitic, and filled with small veins of carbonate of iron, and spots of red iron-ore. At Rancié the lias nearest the granite is not only filled with iron-ore, but charged with pyrites, tremolite, garnet, and a new mineral somewhat allied to felspar, called, from the place in the Pyrenees where it occurs, "couzeranite." ”

“ Under the general head of phosphate rock are included: (1) the typical guano, which is the consolidated excrement of certain marine birds inhabiting in great numbers small coral islands in the dry or rainless regions of the tropics; (2) the underlying coral rock, which is often changed to phosphate rock through the percolation of the rain-water falling on the guano; (3) accumulations of the bones and coprolites of the higher animals; (4) phosphatic limestones from which the carbonate of lime has been largely dissolved away, leaving the more insoluble phosphate of lime. ”

“ By a number of trials he found that this was not completely effected till the quantity of red oxide added amounted to five times the quantity contained in the prussiate. In the decomposition of prussiate of mercury alone by heat, it is only one sixth part of the prussic acid, which is decomposed by the quantity of oxygen in the oxide present as a constituent of that salt, and hence five more equal quantities are requisite to effect the complete decomposition of the whole. ”

“ The most deadly of all poisons, prussic or hydrocyanic acid, is obtained from the ferrocyanide of potassium, or prussiate of potash, by adding diluted sulphuric acid and distilling the vapour into an ice-cold receiver. ”

“ They redden the tincture of violets and blue paper, which loses its colour on drying, and this proves the existence of a free acid; being agitated, an air is disengaged with noise: all the acids, weak and strong, produce effervescence with these waters. The prussiate of potash, when a little of any acid is added to it, causes in the ferruginous water a blue precipitate, which is the prussiate of iron. Iron-water being boiled, it loses the property of effervescing with the acids, of forming a precipitate with the prussiate of potash, and also its astringency. ”

“ The supernatant acid used in this experiment being decanted, and neutralized by the addition of an alkali, yielded no precipitate of iron to the tincture of galls; but the prussiate of potass threw down a blue precipitate upon which however no reliance can be placed; as it is well known that the prussiate of potass is not a satisfactory test of the presence of iron when this metal exists in an inconsiderable portion. ”

“ The cause of the 'setting' of puzzolana and tufa is that rain-water containing a small proportion of carbonic acid acts on the lime in the volcanic fragments, and these become cemented together by the carbonate of lime and the free silica, which are thus produced in the mass.
When a strong wind is blowing during a volcanic outburst, the materials may be driven to one side of the vent, and accumulate there more rapidly than on the other. Thus lop-sided cones are formed, such as may frequently be observed in some volcanic districts. ”

“ Prussiate of potash is made by heating together carbonate of potash, scraps of iron, and any kind of animal refuse, as blood, horns and hoofs, clippings of skin or old woollen rags; these are stirred together, and the heat raised, till they form a sort of paste of a black color, which, when cold, is thrown into water and all the soluble parts washed out; this fluid is filtered till quite clear, evaporated, and set aside that crystals may form ”

“ Important deposits of mineral phosphates are now worked on a large scale in the United States, the annual yield far surpassing that of any other part of the world. The most active operations are carried on in Florida, where the phosphate was first worked in 1887 in the form of pebbles in the gravels of Peace river. Then followed the discovery of “hard rock phosphate,” a massive mineral, often having cavities lined with nearly pure phosphorite. ”

“ PRUSSIAN BLUE, otherwise called Berlin Blue, Paris Blue, Prussiate of Iron, Ferrocyanide of Iron, &c., was accidentally discovered in 1710 by Diesbach, a colour-maker at Berlin. It is a compound of iron and cyanogen, of varying composition, formed by adding yellow prussiate of potash to a persalt of iron, or by oxidizing the precipitate obtained from the prussiate and a protosalt. The finest blue is furnished by sesquinitrate of iron, but the salt almost exclusively employed is the protosulphate, the freedom of which from copper is essential to the colour of the blue. ”

“ Those geologists who have doubted whether granite could have been formed by igneous liquefaction, because minerals of different degrees of fusibility impress each other with their forms, could not have been aware of the fact of crystallised hornblende penetrating phonolite, a rock undoubtedly of igneous origin. The viscidity, which it is now known, that both feldspar and quartz retain at a temperature much below their points of fusion, easily explains their mutual impressment. ”

“ The replacing silicates are white pyroxene, serpentine, loganite, and pyrallolite or rensselaerite. The pyroxene and serpentine are often found in contact, filling contiguous chambers in the fossil, and were evidently formed in consecutive stages of a continuous process. In the Burgess specimens, while the sarcode is replaced by loganite, the calcareous skeleton, as has already been stated, has been replaced by dolomite, « 51 » and the finer parts of the structure have been almost wholly obliterated. ”

“ It is equally useless to examine into the powers of the granite and quartzy rocks to resist heat, as they also are well known.
The fusibility of the pudding-stone arises partly from the fusible nature of the substance which I have described as forming its proper paste, but in some measure also from that of the amygdaloids and greenstones imbedded in it. It is in consequence of the carbonic acid contained in the calcareous crystals which these amygdaloid pebbles exhibit, that the inflated scoria are produced ”

“ Those who have written upon their virtues assert, and with seeming propriety, that where they deposit an ochreous sediment, they are certainly dispossessed of their steely virtues; for ochre being no other than the calx of iron, such a residue evinces the evaporation of the more eminent properties of the chalybeate, by the phlogiston of the mineral escaping by its extreme volatility. Every metal deprived of this igneous principle is immediately reduced to a calx, and thus deprived of its splendour, fusibility, and other properties, until restored again by the readmission of its phlogiston. ”

“ This Joplin district has produced more zinc than any other in the world. The United States annually produces about 25% of the world’s supply of this metal.
Sphalerite is always associated with galena, and such other minerals as argentite, pyrite, chalcopyrite, fluorite, quartz, calcite and barite, are very apt to be present. It will be found in almost every state, especially in fissures and veins, and less frequently in cavities in limestones. ”

“ If a mineral scratches calcite and is scratched by fluorite, we say its hardness is between 3 and 4, perhaps 3.5; if it neither scratches nor is scratched by orthoclase, its hardness is 6; and so on. There are very few minerals harder than quartz, and hence the first seven members of the scale are sufficient for all ordinary purposes ”

“ At the receiving station, paper well moistened with a solution of prussiate of potass and nitric acid was placed upon a corresponding cylinder to receive the message, and a piece of steel wire was kept steadily pressed upon it as it moved along. The action of the electric current at the parts where it was transmitted caused the acid to enter into combination with the steel, and the consequent deposition of iron on the paper was instantly150 converted by the prussiate of potass into Prussian blue. ”

“ Although vitreous and pumiceous forms are known they are rare, and in the great majority of cases these rocks are finely crystalline with a dull or shimmering lustre in the ground-mass. Marked characteristics are the readiness with which they decompose, and the frequency of veins and cavities occupied by natrolite, analcite, scolecite and other zeolites. Small black grains of augite or hornblende and sometimes blue specks of hauyne may be seen in the rocks when they are fresh. ”