ZIM'RI. A character intended to represent Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, in Dryden's Absa lom and Achitophel. The caricature received high praise from Walpole. Buckingham an swered it in his Poetic Reflections on a Late Poem entitled, "Absalom and Achitophel." ZINC (Fr. zinc, from Ger. Zink, zinc; con nected with 01161. zin, Ger. Zinn, AS., Eng. tin, and with Goth. tains, AS. tan, OTIG. rein, twig, thin leaf of metal). A well-known metallic ele ment. In the isolated state it was unknown to the ancients, but coins of brass, of Nv':_ich zinc is a constituent, have been found dating as far back as A.D. 110. Basil Valentine mentions zinc in several of his writings, but it was not until 1520 that l'aracelsus first described zinc as a metal and assigned it to the class of semi-metals. Its character as a distinct substance was not fully recognized until the close of the seventeenth century, and even Lemery, in 1675, refers to zinc as being identical with bismuth. The metal has been reported native in small quantities near Melbourne. Australia, and in the United States in northeastern Alabama, but these discoveries wq1 confirmation. The principal ores are the carbonate, or smithsonite; the oxide, or zinciteg the oxide in combination with manganese oxide, or franklinite; the silicate, or calamine; and the sulphide, or sphalerite, usually called Wendt!. commonly zinc occnrs as the aluminate, the arsenate, the phosphate. and the sulphate.
Zinc (symbol, Zn; atomic weight, 65.11) is a bluish white metal with a specific gravity of 6.9. It melts at 119° C. (786° F.) and boils at 1010° C. 11994° F.). Tt is brittle at ordinary tomperat ;trey, but becomes malleable between 100` and 150° C. (212° to 300° F.). Commer cial zinc has a coarse laminar texture; it is mod rately hard, oliffieult to file, and when bent after fm-ion emits a crackling noise similar to that of tin. The metal is commonly known in the trade as spelter. It comes into commerce chiefly in the form of sheets and is extensively used in the arts, es peeially in the manufacture of brass, German silver, and other alloys (see ALLOY) ; also for freeing lead from silver, for galvanizing iron, for electrical batteries, as a chemical reagent, etc. Zinc combines with oxygen to form a
monoxide, which may be prepared artificially by burning the metal in air, the product being a slightly yellow pulverulent solid that is known in commerce as zinc-white, and is used as a pig ment and in medicine. It was the nix alba, 'philosophical wool,' or 'flower of zinc' of the alchemists, and the tutia or pompholyx of the ancients. Among other commercial zinc compounds is the chloride (oleunz lapidis cala minaris), first described by Glauber in 1648. It is prepared commercially by treating scrap zinc with hydrochloric acid and evaporating the re sulting solution to crystallization. This salt is used in medicine as a caustic, and is a disin fectant and deodorizer. it finds extensive ap plication as a preservative of timber, the chloride in the form of a solution being forced by pressnre into the pores of the wood; it is also employed for weighting cotton goods. The bromide and the iodide are both official in the Pharmacopeia, the former being used in the treatment of epilepsy and the latter for scrofula and hysteria. Zinc sulphate. originally known as 'white vitriol,' and found native as goslarite, was described by Basil Valentine. This salt may be obtained by roasting ores containing zinc sul phate, afterwards exhausting with water, and then evaporating to crystallization. It is a white powder used in medicine as an astringent; it is also used in dyeing and calico printing, in the manufacture of varnishes and drying oils, for painting, and for the preparation of zinc-white and other zinc compounds.