5. Method of Making Transparent into a thin glass phial half a brick of Windsor soap, cut into small pieces; fill the phial half full of alcohol, and place it near the fire till the whole is dissolved. This mixture, put into a mould and boiled, is trans parent soap. II' well prepared, it should have the ap pearance of fine white sugar candy. It may be co loured; but vegetable colours should be used in prefer ence to mineral ones.
Tallow soap is preferable, in making transparent soap, to olive oil soap, as the latter forms a paste too difficult to melt, and its odour too powerful for mixing with perfumes. Dr. 13rewster's Journal of Science, No. xiii. p. 172.
Both the vegetable and the animal kingdom have supplied the inhabitants of different countries with a substitute for soap.
In America, the outer rhind of the seed of what is called the soap tree, is used by the natives; and in Africa, soap is made with a small insect of the carab genus. M. Geoffroy de Villeneuve, who a few years ago sent home some of this soap to Paris, gives the follow ing account of it. "Being in the village of Portudal, a few leagues from Senegal, employed in collecting insects, and inviting the negroes to procure me supplies, one of them presented me with a pot, containing many thousands of a small insect of the carab genus. They were ready dried, and the num
bers showed that they had been collected for some par ticular purpose. On inquiring, 1 learned that this insect entered into the composition of the soap used in the country. The same negro also showed me a ball of this soap, which was of a blackish colour, but had all the properties of our common soap; and I learned, in the sequel, that these insects are converted to the same purpose all along the coast of Senegal. This carab is black, but the edges or borders of the corslet, and also the elytres, are of a reddish colour; the feet and the antennim are of a pale colour." For farther information concerning soap, sec Ex periences relatives a la. Fabrication des Sa1:0175 dues, from M. Colin in the .4nn. de Chim., September 1816, vol. i. and a Memoir on the Causes of tile Diversifies Pawl in Soap, in reference to their hardne.ss and smells, in the .'inn. de Chilli., (S-c. vol. xxiii. p.