Cinnabar, in natural history, is either native, or factitious. The former is an ore of quick-silver, moderately compact, very heavy, and of a beautiful striated, red colour. The latter is composed of six, or eight parts of mercury, to one of sulphur; the whole is sublimed, and thus reduced into a fine, red glebe. The best is of a high colour, and full of fibres, resembling needles; the chief use of cinnabar is for painting.

Forme:!}', the native cinnabar was much employed in medicine, as a sedative and antispasmodic powder, which is still vended in Germany, for the use of the ignorant, who take a dose of it after every alarm, or fright. But as this metallic substance contains arsenical particles, of which it cannot be cleared by repeated ablution, it frequently occasions nausea, trembling, and anxiety; which, however, subside after vomiting, - We should not have mentioned this substance, had we not learnt from a pamphlet, published by Dr. Lettsom, that a late famous Quack (whose son and widow now contend in the newspapers, for the authenticity of his prescriptions; and still trifle with the lives of un-wary persons), administered the native cinnabar, in red powders, of which he kept six kinds, containing different proportions of this pig-ment, in order to deceive the patients by agreater variety of colours, - When will this outrage on hu-manity terminate ?