e can not permit ourselves to doubt that the
manufacture of borax in Tuscany will hereafter be carried to a degree of
perfection greatly transcending the expectations of those who formerly
wrote on the subject. One of these observes the atmosphere has some
influence on the results. In bright and clear weather, whether in winter
or summer, the vapors are less dense, but the depositions of boracic
acid in the lagoons are greater. Increased vapors indicate unfavorable
change of weather, and the lagoons are infallible barometers to the
neighborhood, even at a great distance, serving to regulate the
proceedings of the peasantry in their agricultural pursuits.

As the quantity of boracic acid originally contained in the water of the
lagoons is so very small as we now know it to be, we can no longer
wonder at the opinion formerly entertained, that it did not exist at
all. After five or six successive impregnations we see it does not
exceed half per cent., which, estimating the quantity of borax at 7500
pounds a day, will give 1,500,000 Tuscan pounds, or 500 tons, of water
for the same period. By the construction of immense cisterns for the
catching of rain water, by the employment of steam-engines for raising
it from below, and probably by creating artificial vents for the
soffioni, the quantity of borax produced might be almost indefinitely
increased, since the range of country through which the vapor ascends is
far too great for us to suppose it to be exhausted by the production of
7000 pounds of borax a day. Science in all likelihood will bring about a
revolution in this as in so many other manufactures, and our descendants
will look back with a smile on our hasty and unphilosophical decision.

We are without information on many points connected with the population
of those districts, to throw light on which it would be necessary to
institute fresh investigations on the spot. The lagoons are usually
excavated by laborers from Lombardy, who wander southward in search of
employment in those months of the year during which the Apennines are
covered with snow. They do not, however, remain to be employed in the
business of manufacture. This is carried on by native Tuscan laborers,
who occupy houses, often spacious and well built, in the neighborhood of
the evaporating pans. They are in nearly all cases married men, and are
enabled to maintain themselves and their families on the comparatively
humble wages of a Tuscan lira a day.