Borax--American and Foreign

The recent development of this useful and interesting chemical in commercial quantities from the bed of a lake in California, naturally draws popular attention to the nature, uses and sources of the article. Its chief importance is in soldering metals. In fusing it at once dissolves the coating of oxide and protects the cleansed bright metal from further oxidation which would obstruct the union of the particles. It effects this by the eager affinity of its base (boron) for oxygen, with which it is always found in union, in the form of boracic acid, free or combined. The salt formed by three parts of the acid with one of soda, is the bi-borate of soda, commonly known as borax.

Boron is a very interesting substance. It is obtained chemically, in three conditions analogous to those of carbon, viz., as a dark-brown powder, a substance resembling black lead, and crystallized. The crystals constitute an artificial diamond, with the distinction that they are boron instead of carbon, some of them equalling the diamond in brilliancy, refractiveness, and hardness, though tinted with red or yellow coloring matter, and marred by laminae of aluminum, from the boride of which the crystals are deposited. Being readily adulterated with common salt, alum, and phosphate of soda, the purity of borax is a question of practical importance with manufacturers. It has been found containing as much as twenty per cent phosphate of soda. The new California article, as we are informed by manufacturers who have tried it, is inferior in no respect but appearance, to the best imported. But as all borax is alike susceptible of adulteration, tests may well be employed by those who wish to produce superior work in metals. Alum may often be detected by the taste, and also by adding ammonia to a solution in water which converts the whole into a thick jelly by precipitation of the alumina. Litmus paper also reveals the acid reaction of alum in turning the blue to red. Phosphate of soda may be detected by exposing the borax to the heat of a drying room for a few hours, when the phosphate will effloresce, and may be picked out.

Borax is found in a crude state in Thibet and Persia, on the borders of certain lakes, the waters of which also yield it by evaporation. It also abounds in the great sandy desert extending inland from the coast of Peru and Ecuador to the Andes, and is here much mixed with borate of lime. The refining of crude borax has been carried on for centuries at various Mediterranean seaports, principally Venice, whence the general name Venetian borax, as applied to the refined article. Our importations of crude and refined borax, mostly the latter, as shown by the custom-house returns, amounted to 655,976 lbs. in the last four years, or an average of about eighty-two tuns per annum. But this amount is not more than one third of the quantity really imported, as the difference in duty has induced the importation of Italian boracic acid, to be manufactured here, by the addition, as above noted, of 33% per cent of soda. The amount of borax annually consumed in this country does not vary very far from 500,000 lbs.: an amount which the California borax lake, if we may believe reports, is already yielding, with 300,000 lbs. more for exportation, and an unlimited supply in prospect. In consequence of this, the importation has virtually ceased. At the same time, the Italian article has been deteriorating for some time by the increase of foreign ingredients as yielded from the earth, and [...]

The manner in which the laboratories of nature supply this article, is the most interesting part of our subject. It appears to be one of the choice ingredients which nature has reserved with peculiar care; for it is evolved only in a very few volcanic regions, and from its limited accumulation even there, would seem to be the product of comparatively recent and local volcanic action. The main supply of commerce, prior to the California discovery, was from the estate of Count Larderel, in Tuscany, where boracic acid issues from volcanic crevices in white clouds of steam and is arrested by the manufacturers in excavated basins of water which absorbs it and on evaporation leaves it in crystals, mixed with a great variety of sulphates and other substances. The evaporation is carried on entirely by the volcanic heat supplied with the article from the bowels of the earth. The product is sold by Mr. Edward Wood, of Liverpool, who has thus enjoyed a virtual monopoly of the trade, amounting to some 3,000,000 lbs. per annum, worth in first hands eight or nine cents per lb. It is worth about thirty cents in the American market.

The Tuscan boracic region covers some thirty square miles of wild mountain land, where the heated and undermined [...]