, are essayed in the attempt to charm away bad
trade. At length a kind of prophet arose of a very practical character
in the form of the late Count Lardarel, who, mindful of the fact that
the chemist Hoeffer, in the time of the Grand Duke Leopold I., had
discovered boric acid in the volcanic steam jets, looked hopefully
beyond the exorcisms of the priests and the superstitions of the people
to a possible blessing contained in what appeared to be an unholy
confusion of Nature. He constructed tanks of from 100 to 1000 ft. in
diameter and 7 to 20 ft. in depth, of such a kind that the steam jets
were surrounded by or contained in them, and thus the liquors formed by
condensation became more and more concentrated. These tanks were
arranged at different levels, so that the liquors could be run off from
one to the other, and finally to settling cisterns. Subsequently the
strong liquors were run to lead-lined, wooden vats, in which the boric
acid was crystallised out. Had the industry depended on the use of fuel
it could never have developed, but Count Lardarel ingeniously utilised
the heat of the steam for all the purposes, and neither coal nor wood
was required.
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