LIQUID AMBER

is obtained from the liquidambar styraciflua , a tree which grows in Mexico, Louisiana, and Virginia. Some specimens are thin, like oil, and others are thickish, like turpentine. It is transparent, amber coloured, has an agreeable and powerful smell, and an aromatic taste, which feels pungent in the throat. Boiling alcohol di olves it almost entirely. It contains a good deal of benzoic acid, some of which effloresces whenever the liquid amber hardens with keeping. LITHARGE (Eng. and Fr.; Glätte , Germ.); is the fused yellow protoxide of lead, which on cooling pa es into a ma consisting of small six-sided plates, of a reddish yellow colour, and semitransparent. It generally contains more or le red lead, whence the variations of its colour; and carbonic acid, especially when it has been exposed to the air for some. time. See Lead , and Silver , for its mode of preparation.