It is the glass maker's soap of glass manufacture, and is used to correct the green color of glass, which is owing to the presence of protoxide of iron. This it converts into the comparatively colorless peroxide.
It is also used in the Bessemer and similar processes, to decompose the oxide of iron. Spiegeleisen, an iron which contains a natural alloy of from 10 to 12 per cent. of manganese, is used for this purpose when conveniently attainable.--Glassware Reporter.
OZOKERITE, OR EARTH-WAX.
By WILLIAM L. LAY.
ON THE DEPOSITS OF EARTH WAX (OZOKERITE) IN EUROPE AND AMERICA.
[Footnote: Abstract from a paper read before the New York Academy of Sciences.]
There exists a large mining and manufacturing industry in Austria, that of ozokerite, or earth-wax, which has nothing like it in any other part of the known world, an industry that supplies Europe with a part of its beeswax, without the aid of the bees. It may not be generally known that the mining of petroleum was a profitable industry in Austria long before it was in this country. In 1852, a druggist near Tarnow distilled the oil and had an exhibit of it in the first World's Fair in London. In America, the first borings were made in 1859. Indeed, the use of petroleum as an illuminator was common at a very early age in the world's history. In Persia at Baku, in India on the Irawada, also in the Crimea, and on the river Kuban in Russia, petroleum has been used in lamps for thousands of years. At Baku the fire worshipers have a never-ceasing flame, which has burned from time immemorial. The mines of ozokerite are located in Austrian Poland, now known as Galicia. Near the city of Drohabich, on the railway line running from Cracow to Lemberg, is a town of six thousand inhabitants, called Borislau, which is entirely supported by the ozokerite industry. It lies at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains. About the year 1862, a shaft was sunk for petroleum at that place. After descending about one hundred and eighty feet, the miners found all the cracks in the clay or rock filled with a brown substance, resembling beeswax. At first, the layers were not thicker than writing paper; but they grew thicker gradually below, until at a depth of three hundred feet they attained a thickness of three or four inches. Upon examination, it was found that a yellow wax could be made of a portion of this substance, and at once a substitute for wax was manufactured.
The discovery caused an excitement like the oil fever of 1865 in America. A large number of leases were made. When I saw the wells of Pennsylvania, in 1879, there were more than two thousand. The owner of the land received one-fourth of the product, and the miners three-fourths. In the petroleum region, the leases at first were whole farms, then they were reduced to 20, then 10, then 5, and at last to 1 acre, which is a square of 209 feet.