water gilding

A mode of gilding by an amalgam in which the articles are pickled and then dipped in or brushed with a dilute solution of nitrate of mercury and gold, called quick-water, which leaves a film of amalgam on the surface. After dipping, the articles are exposed to heat in a cage within a furnace, and the mercury is thus driven off. The gold surface is then polished with a bloodstone burnisher. water-gladiole, s. Bot.: The genus Butomus. ( Gerarde.) water-gla , s. *1. A water clock or clepsydra. 2. Soluble gla (q. v.). water-god, s. Anthrop .: (See extract.) "Divine springs, streams, and lakes, water-spirits, dei. ties concerned with the clouds and rain, are frequent, and many details of them are cited here, but I have not succeeded in finding among the lower races any divinity whose attributes, fairly criticised, will show him or her to be an original and absolute elemental Water - god ." Tylor : Prim . Cult . (ed. 1873), ii. 274. water-gruel, subst . A liquid food composed of water and a small portion of meal or other farinaceous substance boiled and seasoned with salt. "I could eat water -gruel with thee a month for this jest."- Ben Jonson: Cynthia's Revels , ii. 1. water-gut, s. Bot.: The genus Enteromorpha (q. v.). water-hammer, s. (See extract.) "In a vacuum, however, liquids fall like solids without separation of their molecules. The water -hammer illustrates this: The instrument consists of a thick gla tube about a foot long, half filled with water, the air having been expelled by ebullition previous to closing one extremity with the blow-pipe. When such a tube is suddenly inverted, the water falls in one undivided ma against the other extremity of the tube, and produces a sharp, dry sound, resembling that which accompanies the shock of two solid bodies." - At kins on : Ganot's Physics. § 77. water-hemlock, s. Bot.: The genus Cicuta (q. v.).