Upon the lavish use of this dangerous pigment in colouring toys, dresses, paper-hangings, artificial leaves, and even cheap confectionery, it is not our province to enlarge: the constant-recurring diseases and deaths, which, directly or indirectly, result from the employment of arsenical pigments, are such every-day facts that they are merely deplored and forgotten. With arsenic on our heads, our clothes, our papers, our sweets, our children's playthings, we are so accustomed to live--and die--in a world of poison, that familiarity with it has bred contempt. Into the fatal popularity, therefore, of arsenical colours for decorative purposes, we shall not further enter; but it behoves us to deprecate their presence, and the presence of all poisonous pigments, in colour-boxes for the young. It is one of the pleasures of childhood to suck anything attractive that comes in its way, openly if allowed, furtively otherwise: and as in early life we have a preference for brilliancy, so vivid a pigment as Scheele's green is an object of special attention. Artistically, it matters little whether a pigment is noxious or not, but we hold that poison should not be put into the hands of the young; and indeed are of opinion that a box of colours is about the worst present a child can receive. 181. MALACHITE GREEN, or _Mountain Green_, is met with in Cumberland, and is also found in the mountains of Kernhausen, whence it is sometimes called _Hungary Green_. It is prepared from malachite, a beautiful copper ore employed by jewellers, and is a hydrated dicarbonate of copper, combined with a white earth, and often striated with veins of mountain blue, to which it bears the same relation that green verditer bears to blue verditer. The colour, which may be extracted from the stone by the process followed for native ultramarine, varies from emerald-green to grass-green, and inclines to grey. It has been held in great esteem by some, and considered strictly stable, on the assumption, probably, that a pigment obtained from a stone like ultramarine, and by the same method, could not be otherwise than permanent. That it is so, with respect to light and air, there is no denying; but the green, when separated from the ore and purified for artistic use, is merely a carbonate of copper, and therefore subject to the influence of damp and impure air, in common with other non-arsenical copper colours. As a pigment, native malachite green has the same composition, or very nearly the same, as that which can be artificially produced, and answers to the same tests. Water-rubs of the two varieties which we exposed to an atmosphere of sulphuretted hydrogen became equally blackened by the gas. Practically, there is little or no difference between them: both preserve their colour if kept from damp and foul air, both are injured by those agents, and both are liable to darken in time, especially when secluded from light. The