MEERSCHAUM  , a

German word designating a soft white mineral sometimes found floating on the Black Sea, and rathei suggestive of sea-foam (Meerschaum), whence also the French name for the same substance, ecume de mer . It was termed by E . F . Glocker sepiolite, in allusion to its remote resemblance to the " bone ". of the sepia or cuttle-fish . Meerschaum ie an opaque mineral of white, grey or cream colour, breaking with a conchoidal or fine earthy fracture, and occasionally though rarely, fibrous in texture . It can be readily scratched with the nail, its hardness being about 2 . The specific gravity varies from 0.988 to 1.279, but the porosity of the mineral may lead to error . Meerschaum is a hydrous magnesium silicate with the formula H4Mg2Si3O10, or Mg2Si308.2H20 . Most of the meerschaum of commerce is obtained from Asia Minor, chiefly from the plain of Eski-Shehr, on the Haidar Pasha-Angora railway, where it occurs in irregular nodular masses, in alluvial deposits, which are extensively worked for its extraction . It is said that in this district there are 4000 shafts leading to horizontal galleries for extraction of the meerschaum . The principal workings are at Sepetdji-Odjaghi and Kemikdji-Odjaghi, about 20 M . S.E. of Eski-Shehr .

The mineral is associated with

magnesite (magnesium carbonate), the primitive source of both minerals being a serpentine . When first extracted the meerschaum is soft, but it hardens on exposure to solar heat or when dried in a warm room . Meerschaum is found also, though less abundantly, in Greece, as at Thebes, and in the islands of Euboea and Samos; it occurs also in serpentine at Hrubschitz near Kromau in Moravia . It is found to a limited extent at certain localities in France and Spain, and is known in Morocco . In the United States it occurs in serpentine in Pennsylvania (as at Nottingham, Chester county) and in South Carolina and Utah . Meerschaum has occasionally been used as a substitute for soap and fuller's earth, and it is said also as a building material; but its chief use is for tobacco-pipes and cigar-holders . The natural nodules - are first scraped to remove the red earthy matrix, then dried, again scraped and polished with wax . The rudely shaped masses thus prepared are sent from the East to Vienna and other manufacturing centres, where they are turned and carved, smoothed with glass-paper and Dutch rushes, heated in wax or stearine, and finally polished with bone-ash, &c . Imitations are made in plaster of Paris and other preparations . The soft, white, earthy mineral from Ungbanshyttan, in Vermland, Sweden, known as aphrodite (d¢,pbs, foam), is closely related to meerschaum . It may be noted that meerschaum has sometimes been called magnesite (q.v.) .