al soda,
glassware, cold mixtures, and medicines. Carbonate of soda is used in
the manufacture of soap, bleaching wool, coloring and painting
tissues, and in the manufacture of fine crystal ware and the
preparation of borax. Chloric acid is used in the preparation of
chlorides with bioxide of manganese, and with chlorides in the
preparation of hypochlorides of lime, known in commerce under the name
of bleaching powder, and improperly called chloride of lime, which is
used as a disinfectant in contagious diseases, in bleaching stuffs,
and in the manufacture of paper from vegetable fibers, and in the
manufacture of gelatine extracted from bones, as well as in fermenting
molasses and in the manufacture of sugar from beet root. Sulphur is
also used in the preparation of gunpowder and oil of vitriol, and in
the manufacture of matches and cultivation of the vine.

In the year 1838 the Neapolitan government granted a monopoly to a
French company for the trade in sulphur. By the terms of the agreement
the producers were required to sell their sulphur to the company at
certain fixed prices, and the latter paid the government the sum of
$350,000 annually in consideration of this requirement. This, however,
was not a success, and tended to curtail the sulphur industry, and the
government, discovering the agreement to be against its interests,
annulled it, and established a free system of production, charging an
export tax per ton only. At that time sulphuric acid was derived
exclusively from sulphur. Hence the demand from all countries was
great, and the prices paid for sulphur were high. It was about this
period that the sulphur industry was at its zenith. The monopoly
having been abolished, every mine did its utmost to produce as much
sulphur as possible, and from the export duty exacted by the
government there accrued to it a much larger revenue than that which
it received during the period of the monopoly. The progress of science
has, however, modified the state of things since then, as sulphur can
now be obtained from pyrite or pyrite of iron. This discovery
immediately caused the price of sulphur to fall, and the great demand
therefore correspondingly ceased. In England, at the present time, it
is understood that two-thirds of the sulphuric acid used is
manufactured from pyrites. The decrease in prices caused many of the
mines to suspend operations, and as a result the sulphur remained idle
in stock. In 1884 an association