[495] Diodor. Sic. lib. v. ed. Wesselingii, i. p. 338.
[496] Tournefort, Voyage i. p. 63. Some information respecting the same subject may be seen in that expensive but useful work, Voyage Pittoresque de la Grèce, i. p. 12.
[497] Diodor. Sic. lib. c. Strabo, lib. vi. edit. Almel. p. 423.
[498] Copious information respecting the Spanish alum-works may be found in Introduccion à la Historia Natural de Espagna, par D. G. Bowles: and in Dillon’s Travels through Spain, 1780, 4to, p. 220.
[499] The derivation of the Latin name alumen, which, if I mistake not, occurs first in Columella and Pliny, is unknown. Some deduce it from ἅλμη; others from ἄλειμμα; and Isidore gives a derivation still more improbable. May it not have come from Egypt with the best sort of alum? Had it originated from a Greek word, it would undoubtedly have been formed from στυπτηρία. This appellation is to be found in Herodotus; and nothing is clearer than that it has arisen from the astringent quality peculiar to both the salts, and also from στύφειν, as has been remarked by Dioscorides, Pliny, and Galen.
[500] Etymol. p. 779.
[501] Plin. lib. xxxiv. c. 12.
[502] Noct. Att. lib. xv. c. 1.
[503] The halotrichum of Scopoli. The first person who discovered this salt to be vitriolic was Henkel, who calls it Atlas-vitriol. [The mineral halotrichite is, in a chemical sense, a true alum in which the sulphate of potash is replaced by the sulphate of the protoxide of iron. It is composed of one atom of protosulphate of iron, one atom of sulphate of alumina, and contains, like all the true alums, twenty-four atoms of water.]
[504] Wecker De Secretis, lib. ix. 18, p. 445.