was the hour of the morning: but, on being informed, that his presages had not been verified by experience, he assured the company, that all these transactions appeared to him not unlike a dream; and he could not conceive how he had been subject to such folly. Since that period, he has enjoyed a perfect state of health, and has been completely cured of his fancy.
There are, nevertheless, several instances recorded, in which persons have truly predicted the day and hour of their death. In the 17th century, it was a fashionable practice among the higher classes, to apply to an astrologer, for learning the accurate duration of their lives. Such aberration from the human intellect, could be ascribed only to an absurd or defective system of education; when youth were not taught to discriminate between natural causes and effects; or, when parents granted every species of indulgence, which alike excited their sensual desires, and pleased a wild, disordered imagination.—Many, indeed, are the gradations, in which that peculiar morbid sensation, generally termed irregular fancy, displays itself under different forms, even in modern times. It cannot be denied, that the numerous phenomena of nervous disorders, especially the diversified symptoms displayed by hypochondriacal and hysterical persons, doubtless originate chiefly from the same source. We often smile at such complaints as are supposed to arise from a diseased mind, but certainly not with justice. In short, there is no disorder more to be dreaded, and none has a more solid foundation, than that in which the sensations of our material nature, and the ideas of our very existence, are in a manner unhinged: nay, it is incomparably more easy to sustain a real evil, than to be tormented by an imaginary one, the force and extent of which cannot be ascertained.
Youth-wort. See Sundew the Round-leaved.
Z.
ZAFFRE, is the oxyd or calx of cobalt, employed for imparting a blue colour to porcelain and pottery ware: it is prepared, according to Cronstedt, in the following manner.
When the cobalt is dug out of the mine, it is first broken into small pieces, and all heterogeneous matters are carefully separated.—The mineral is then submitted to the action of stamping mills, in wliiich it is reduced to a fine powder, that is sifted through brass wire sieves. Next, the lighter particles are carried off by water, and the cobalt is put into a reverberatory furnace, terminating in a long horizontal gallery; through which the arsenic, usually mixed with the mineral, sublimes: farther, the cobalt is frequently stirred with long iron hooks or rakes, till it ceases to emit any fumes; when it remains in the form of a dark grey calx, denominated Zaffre.
