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Updated: June 13, 2025
Our busy factories and foundries our copper, silver, and plumbago mines our salt and petroleum the increasing exports of native produce speak volumes for the prosperity of the Dominion and for the government of those who are at the head of affairs.
There are very old plumbago mines hereabouts, and a group of mouldering stone lions, elephants, and a figure designed to represent that fabulous creature, the unicorn. These recall somewhat similar groups one sees in the wilds of continental India, mementos which are believed to antedate by ten or fifteen centuries the origin of the famous "buried cities" of Ceylon.
A pen of almost any kind is a valuable article, but for rough-and-ready use we should find it hard to get on without its humble friend, the lead pencil. A lead pencil, by the way, has not a particle of lead in it. The "lead" is all graphite, or plumbago. Years ago sticks of lead were used for marking, and made a pale-gray line.
Among the cataracts, and wherever the Orinoco, between the Missions of Carichana and of Santa Barbara, periodically washes the granitic rocks, they become smooth, black, and as if coated with plumbago. The colouring matter does not penetrate the stone, which is coarse-grained granite, containing a few solitary crystals of hornblende.
Graphite, plumbago, or, as it is more commonly called, black-lead, which, we may say in passing, has nothing of lead about it at all, is best known in the shape of that very useful and cosmopolitan article, the black-lead pencil. This is even purer carbon than anthracite, not more than 5 per cent. of ash and other impurities being present.
Iodine is solid at the ordinary temperature, presenting the appearance of dark-grey or purple spangles, possessing a high degree of metallic lustre. It somewhat resembles plumbago, with which it is sometimes diluted, particularly when it is fine. Operators should endeavor to secure the larger crystals. It melts at 224.6 deg., forming a brown or nearly black liquid.
Ashton-Kirk rang the bell here, and while they waited a man who had been seated in the open door of the machine shop got up and approached them. He wore blue overalls and a jumper liberally discolored by plumbago and other lubricants; a short wooden pipe was held between his teeth, and a cloth cap sat upon the back of his head. "Looking up the Dago?" asked he with a grin.
If a horse gets in his hoofs make no impression on the firm turf of the Parramatta grass, and you get quite a hearty laugh by dropping a chair on him from the first-floor window. The game fowls of your other neighbour come fluttering into your garden, and scratch and chuckle and fluff themselves under your plumbago bush; but you don't worry. Why should you?
Here are the magnolia, the laurel, the Japanese medlar, the oleander, the pepper, the bay, the date-palm, a tree called the plumbago, another from the Cape of Good Hope, the pomegranate, the elder in full leaf, the olive, salvia, heliotrope; close by is a banana-tree.
Shrubs of the golden Allamander were a great temptation to the cows, if they strayed into the garden. The Plumbago was one of the few pale-blue flowers which liked that blazing heat.
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