Messrs Nenmayer and Fehleisen’s haloxylin is composed of charcoal, nitre, and yellow prussiate of potash. See Gun-cotton, Gunpowder, Mining, &c.
BLATTA ORIENTALIS. The common cockroach, originally imported from the East, belongs to the family of orthopterous insects; and may be classed amongst the most offensive and objectionable of domestic pests. It is extremely voracious, not only devouring all kinds of provisions, but attacking and consequently destroying silk, flannel, and even cotton fabrics, in the absence of anything more eatable. The cockroach is nocturnal in its habits, and exceedingly active and swift of movement. Its flattened form enables it to insinuate itself easily into crevices, and so to escape detection. The American cockroach (Blatta Americana) is larger than the above. A still larger species (Blatta gigantea) is found in the West Indies where it is known by the name of the drummer.
It is so called from the tapping noise it makes on wood, the sound so produced, when joined in by several of the creatures (as it usually is) being sufficient to destroy the slumbers of a household.
Cockroaches may be poisoned by means of wafers made of red lead, or caught by smearing a piece of wood with treacle, and floating it on a broad basin of water. When the fires and lights are extinguished they issue from their holes, and fall into the basin in their efforts to reach the bait. The chinks and holes from which they come should also be filled up with unslaked lime, and some lime should also be sprinkled about the ground.
Old Gerrard says they avoid any place in which the leaves of the mullein are strewn about.
The Blatta Orientalis, which was formerly supposed to possess remedial powers, and was hence employed in medicine by the more ancient therapeutists, has lately found advocates for his readmission into the animal materia medica. He is reported, when made into a tincture, to act as a diuretic, and to yield a crystalline body possessed of similar properties, but in a more concentrated form. Some of the American journals report that he may be given in the form of powder or infusion (from 15 to 30 gr.) 3 or 4 times a day, in dropsy, and to increase the secretion of urine as well as of perspiration.
BLEACH′ING, (blēche′-). Syn. Deälba′tio (-sh′o), Insola′tio,[205] &c., L.; Blanchiment, Blanchissage, Fr.; Bleichen, Ger. The process by which the colour of bodies, natural or acquired, is removed, and by which they are rendered white or colourless. It is more particularly applied to the decolorisation of textile filaments, and of cloths made of them.
[205] Bleaching by exposure in the sun.
Hist. Bleaching is a very ancient art, as passages referring to it in the earlier sacred and profane writers fully testify. It had probably reached a high degree of excellence among the inhabitants of the first Assyrian empire, and was certainly practised in Egypt long before the commencement of written history. We may fairly assume that fine white linen formed part of the “raiment,” which, together with “jewels of gold, and jewels of silver,” and “precious things,” Abraham sent as presents to the beautiful Rebekah and her family,[206] fully three centuries and a half before the Exodus. Subsequently, in Scripture, we have special mention of “fine linen, white and clean.” Herodotus, the earliest Greek historian, tells us, that the Babylonians wore “white cloaks;”[207] and in Athenæus we read of “shining fine linen,” as opposed to that which was “raw” or unbleached.[208] At this early period, and for many centuries afterwards, the operations of washing, fulling, and bleaching were not distinctly separated. The common system of washing followed by drying in the sun, adopted by the ancients, is a process which of itself, by frequent repetition, decolorises the raw materials of textile fabrics, and thus must inevitably have taught them the art of ‘natural bleaching’ of a character similar to that practised in Europe up to a comparatively very recent period. And this appears, according to the authority of ancient authors, to have been the case. Washing or steeping in alkaline and ammoniacal lyes, or in milk of lime, followed by exposure in the sun, formed the chief basis of their system; whilst woollens, then as now, were treated with soap and fuller’s earth, or with potter’s clay, marl, Cimolian earth, or other like mineral. Urine was highly esteemed among them; and we are told that in the time of the emperor Vespasian,[209] and undoubtedly long before it, cloths were sulphured. Indeed, according to Pliny, sulphuring was often had recourse to in ordinary washing, as well as in the bleaching process.[210]
[206] Gen. xxiv, 53; B.C. 1857.