The orpiment of commerce is an artificial production, and is chiefly imported from different parts of the Levant. The Turks, and other Orientals, use it in the depilatories which serve to render bald the top of the head. A very beautiful, but fugitive pigment, called _King’s yellow_, is prepared from this mineral; and other preparations of orpiment are occasionally used by painters, and also by dyers and calico printers. The whole of these, however, are extremely poisonous. Orpiment is found in a natural state, along with copper and other ores, in Natolia, Servia, Hungary, Turkey, and some other countries. 244. _REALGAR, or RED ORPIMENT, is a mineral substance of red or orange colour, which consists of arsenic in combination with sulphur; and in the proportion of seventy─five parts of the former, and twenty─five of the latter._ _It is somewhat more than three times as heavy as water; and occurs sometimes in a crystallized, and sometimes in a massive or disseminated state._ This production, which, by ignorant persons, is not unfrequently mistaken for red lead, is in considerable request by painters, dyers, and calico printers. In China it is manufactured into small pagodas and other ornaments. And the Chinese form it into medical cups, and use lemon juice which has stood for some hours in them, as a cathartic. Realgar is poisonous, but by no means so much so as arsenic (242). It is found in Sicily, Hungary, and various parts of Germany: and is very common in several districts of China. 245. _ANTIMONY is a compact metallic substance of brilliant and slightly bluish white colour, destitute of ductility, and about seven times heavier than water._ _Its texture is laminated, the plates crossing each other in almost every different direction. It is as hard as silver, and so brittle that it may easily be reduced to powder, in a mortar._ In the state of the Connecticut, North America, it is said that antimony, in a pure metallic form, is found in such abundance that, in some places, large masses of it may be seen lying on the surface of the ground. The principal supply of antimony in Europe is from an ore which is found in Hungary and Norway, called _sulphuret of antimony_. The process of bringing it into a state for use is very simple. The mineral is put into pots, each of which has a hole in the bottom, and which is placed on another pot bedded in the earth. The upper pots, which are filled with the mineral, are heated. As soon as the antimony is fused it flows into the lower pots, while the substances with which it was combined remain in the upper ones. The antimony fixes, and forms cakes of the shape of the pots which receive it. In this state the metal presents, in its fracture, a surface thick─set, with long needle─shaped crystals, which, lying by the side of each other, compose, as it were, the whole of the mass. It is afterwards re─melted and cast into cakes for sale.