The New Student's Reference Work/Antimony

An'timony, a brittle metal of a bluish-white color. It may easily be reduced to a powder. When heated to about 800° it melts, and when cooled it forms crystals. It burns in the air with a white light, and gives off fumes known as the flowers of antimony. It does not tarnish or rust, and so is much used in alloys, such as type-metal. The finely-divided metal, called antimony black, is used to give casts an appearance of iron. There are a number of useful compounds of antimony: tartar emetic, the tartrate which is used in medicine; glass of antimony, a mixture of oxide and sulphide, used for coloring glass and porcelain yellow; and butter of antimony, the chloride, an oily liquid, which, mixed with olive oil, is used by gunmakers to give a brown color to gun barrels. The principal source of the metal is the sulphide, called stibnite or gray antimony ore. It is smelted in France, where it is found abundantly, in Germany and in England which receives its supply from Singapore and Borneo. Antimony is found in America, in California, Nevada, Mexico and New Brunswick.