Part 19

FULLER'S EARTH (Ger. _Walkererde_, Fr. _terre a foulon_, _argile smectique_)--so named from its use by fullers as an absorbent of the grease and oil of cloth,--a clay-like substance, which from its variability is somewhat difficult to define. In colour it is most often greenish, olive-green or greenish-grey; on weathering it changes to a brown tint or it may bleach. As a rule it falls to pieces when placed in water and is not markedly plastic; when dry it adheres strongly to the tongue; since, however, these properties are possessed by many clays that do not exhibit detergent qualities, the only test of value lies in the capacity to absorb grease or clarify oil. Fuller's earth has a specific gravity of 1.7-2.4, and a shining streak; it is usually unctuous to the touch. Microscopically, it consists of minute irregular-shaped particles of a mineral that appears to be the result of a chloritic or talcose alteration of a felspar. The small size of most of the grains, less than .07 mm., makes their determination almost impossible. Chemical analysis shows that the peculiar properties of this earth are due to its physical rather than its chemical nature.

The following analyses of the weathered and unweathered condition of the earth from Nutfield, Surrey, represent the composition of one of the best known varieties:--

Blue Earth (dried at 100 deg. C.).

Insoluble residue 69.96 | Insoluble residue-- Fe2O3 2.48 | SiO2 62.81 Al2O3 3.46 | Al2O3 3.46 CaO 5.87 | Fe2O3 1.30 MgO 1.41 | CaO 1.53 P2O5 0.27 | MgO 0.86 SO3 0.05 | ----- NaCl 0.05 | 69.96 K2O 0.74 | ===== H2O (combined) 15.57 | ----- | 99.86 | ===== |

Yellow Earth (dried at 100 deg. C.).

Insoluble residue 76.13 | Insoluble residue-- Fe2O3 2.41 | SiO2 59.37 Al2O3 1.77 | Al2O3 10.05 CaO 4.31 | Fe2O3 3.86 MgO 1.05 | CaO 1.86 P2O5 0.14 | MgO 1.04 SO3 0.07 | ----- NaCl 0.14 | 76.18 K2O 0.84 | ===== H2O (combined) 13.19 | ------ | 100.05 | ====== |

(Analysis by P.G. Sanford, _Geol. Mag._, 1889, 6, pp. 456, 526.)

Of other published analyses, not a few show a lower silica content (44%, 50%), along with a higher proportion of alumina (11%, 23%).

Fuller's earth may occur on any geological horizon; at Nutfield in Surrey, England, it is in the Cretaceous formations; at Midford near Bath it is of Jurassic age; at Bala, North Wales, it occurs in Ordovician strata; in Saxony it appears to be the decomposition product of a diabasic rock. In America it is found in California in rocks ranging from Cretaceous to Pleistocene age; in S. Dakota, Custer county and elsewhere a yellow, gritty earth of Jurassic age is worked; in Florida and Georgia occurs a brittle, whitish earth of Oligocene age. Other deposits are worked in Arkansas, Texas, Colorado, Massachusetts and South Carolina.

Fuller's earth is either mined or dug in the open according to local circumstances. It is then dried in the sun or by artificial heat and transported in small lumps in sacks. In other cases it is ground to a fine powder after being dried; or it is first roughly ground and made into a slurry with water, which is allowed to carry off the finer from the coarser particles and deposit them in a creamy state in suitable tanks. After consolidation this fine material is dried artificially on drying floors, broken into lumps, and packed for transport. The use of fuller's earth for cleansing wool and cloth has greatly decreased, but the demand for the material is as great or greater than it ever was. It is now used very largely in the filtration of mineral oils, and also for decolourizing certain vegetable oils. It is employed in the formation of certain soaps and cleansing preparations.

The term "Fuller's Earth" has a special significance in geology, for it was applied by W. Smith in 1799 to certain clays in the neighbourhood of Bath, and the use of the expression is still retained by English geologists, either in this form or in the generalized "Fullonian." The Fullonian lies at the base of the Great Oolite or Bathonian series, but its palaeontological characters place it between that series and the underlying Inferior Oolite. The zonal fossils are _Perisphinctes arbustigerus_ and _Macrocephalus subcontractus_ with _Ostrea acuminata_, _Rhynchonella concinna_ and _Goniomya angulifera_. The formation is in part the equivalent of the "Vesulien" of J. Marcou (Vesoul in Haute-Saone). In Dorsetshire and Somersetshire, where it is best developed, it is represented by an Upper Fuller's Earth Clay, the Fuller's Earth Rock (an impersistent earthy limestone, usually fossiliferous), and the Lower Fuller's Earth Clay. Commercial fuller's earth has been obtained only from the Upper Clay. In eastern Gloucestershire and northern Oxfordshire the Fuller's Earth passes downwards without break into the Inferior Oolite; northward it dies out about Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire and passes laterally into the Stonesfield Slates series; in the midland counties it may perhaps be represented by the "Upper Estuarine Series." In parts of Dorsetshire the clays have been used for brickmaking and the limestone (rock) for local buildings.

See H.B. Woodward, "Jurassic Rocks of Great Britain," vol. iv. (1894), _Mem. Geol. Survey_ (London). [J. A. H.]

FULLERTON, LADY GEORGIANA CHARLOTTE (1812-1885), English novelist and philanthropist, youngest daughter of the 1st Earl Granville, was born at Tixall Hall in Staffordshire on the 23rd of September 1812. In 1833 she married Alexander George Fullerton, then an Irish officer in the guards. After living in Paris for some eight years she and her husband accompanied Lord Granville to Cannes and thence to Rome. In 1843 her husband entered the Roman Catholic church, and in the following year Lady Georgiana Fullerton published her first novel, _Ellen Middleton_, which attracted W.E. Gladstone's attention in the _English Review_. In 1846 she entered the Roman Catholic church. The death of her only son in 1854 plunged her in grief, and she continued to wear mourning until the end of her life. In 1856 she became one of the third order of St Francis, and thenceforward devoted herself to charitable work. In conjunction with Miss Taylor she founded the religious community known as "The Poor Servants of the Mother of God Incarnate," and she also took an active part in bringing to England the sisters of St Vincent of Paul. Her philanthropic work is described in Mrs Augustus Craven's work _Lady Georgiana Fullerton, sa vie et ses [oe]uvres_ (Paris, 1888), which was translated into English by Henry James Coleridge. She died at Bournemouth on the 19th of January 1885. Among her other novels were _Grantley Manor_ (1847), _Lady Bird_ (1852), and _Too Strange not to be True_ (1864).

FULMAR, from the Gaelic _Fulmaire_, the _Fulmarus glacialis_ of modern ornithologists, one of the largest of the petrels (_Procellariidae_) of the northern hemisphere, being about the size of the common gull (_Larus canus_) and not unlike it in general coloration, except that its primaries are grey instead of black. This bird, which ranges over the North Atlantic, is seldom seen on the European side below lat. 53 deg. N., but on the American side comes habitually to lat. 45 deg. or even lower. In the Pacific it is represented by a scarcely separable form, _F. glupischa_. It has been commonly believed to have two breeding-places in the British Islands, namely, St Kilda and South Barra; but, according to Robert Gray (_Birds of the West of Scotland_, p. 499), it has abandoned the latter since 1844, though still breeding in Skye. Northward it established itself about 1838 on Myggenaes Holm, one of the Faeroes, while it has several stations off the coast of Iceland and Spitsbergen, as well as at Bear Island. Its range towards the pole seems to be only bounded by open water, and it is the constant attendant upon all who are employed in the whale and seal fisheries, showing the greatest boldness in approaching boats and ships, and feeding on the offal obtained from them. By British seamen it is commonly called the "molly mawk"[1] (corrupted from _Mallemuck_), and is extremely well known to them, its flight, as it skims over the waves, first with a few beats of the wings and then gliding for a long way, being very peculiar. It only visits the land to deposit its single white egg, which is laid on a rocky ledge, where a shallow nest is made in the turf and lined with a little dried grass. Many of its breeding-places are a most valuable property to those who live near them and take the eggs and young, which, from the nature of the locality, are only to be had at a hazardous risk of life. In St Kilda a large number of the young are killed in one week of August, the only time when, by the custom of the community, they are allowed to be taken. These, after the oil is extracted from them, serve the islanders with food for the winter. The oil has been chemically analysed and found to be a fish-oil, and to possess nearly all the qualities of that obtained from the liver of the cod, with a lighter specific gravity. It, however, has an extremely strong scent, which is said by those who have visited St Kilda to pervade every thing and person on the island, and is certainly retained by an egg or skin of the bird for many years. Whenever a live example is seized in the hand it ejects a considerable quantity of this oil from its mouth.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] A name misapplied in the southern hemisphere to _Diomedea melanophrys_, one of the albatrosses.

FULMINIC ACID, HCNO or H2C2N2O2, an organic acid isomeric with cyanic and cyanuric acids; its salts, termed fulminates, are very explosive and are much employed as detonators. The free acid, which is obtained by treating the salts with acids, is an oily liquid smelling like prussic acid; it is very explosive, and the vapour is poisonous to about the same degree as that of prussic acid. The first fulminate prepared was the "fulminating silver" of L.G. Brugnatelli, who found in 1798 that if silver be dissolved in nitric acid and the solution added to spirits of wine, a white, highly explosive powder was obtained. This substance is to be distinguished from the black "fulminating silver" obtained by C.L. Berthollet in 1788 by acting with ammonia on precipitated silver oxide. The next salt to be obtained was the mercuric salt, which was prepared in 1799 by Edward Charles Howard, who substituted mercury for silver in Brugnatelli's process. A similar method is that of J. von Liebig (1823), who heated a mixture of alcohol, nitric acid and mercuric nitrate; the salt is largely manufactured by processes closely resembling the last. A laboratory method is to mix solutions of sodium nitromethane, CH2:NO(ONa), and mercuric chloride, a yellow basic salt being formed at the same time. Mercuric fulminate is less explosive than the silver salt, and forms white needles (with 1/2H2O) which are tolerably soluble in water. The use of mercuric fulminate as a detonator dates from about 1814, when the explosive cap was invented. It is still the commonest detonator, but it is now usually mixed with other substances; the British service uses for percussion caps 6 parts of fulminate, 6 of potassium chlorate and 4 of antimony sulphide, and for time fuses 4 parts of fulminate, 6 of potassium chlorate and 4 of antimony sulphide, the mixture being damped with a shellac varnish; for use in blasting, a home office order of 1897 prescribes a mixture of 4 parts of fulminate and 1 of potassium chlorate. In 1900 Bielefeldt found that a fulminate placed on top of an aromatic nitro compound, such as trinitrotoluene, formed a useful detonator; this discovery has been especially taken advantage of in Germany, in which country detonators of this nature are being largely employed. Tetranitromethylaniline (tetryl) has also been employed (Brit. Pat. 13340 of 1905). It has been proposed to replace fulminate by silver azoimide (Wohler & Matter, Brit. Pat. 4468 of 1908), and by lead azoimide (Hyronimus, Brit. Pat. 1819 of 1908).

The constitution of fulminic acid has been investigated by many experimenters, but apparently without definitive results. The researches of Liebig (1823), Liebig and Gay-Lussac (1824), and of Liebig again in 1838 showed the acid to be isomeric with cyanic acid, and probably (HCNO)2, since it gave mixed and acid salts. Kekule, in 1858, concluded that it was nitroacetonitrile, NO2.CH2.CN, a view opposed by Steiner (1883), E. Divers and M. Kawakita (1884), R. Scholl (1890), and by J.U. Nef (1894), who proposed the formulae:

C : N.OH / N : CH CH : N.O .. O / . . C : N.OH. C : N.OH, \ N : C.OH, CH : N.0,

Steiner, Divers, Scholl, Nef.

The formulae of Kekule, Divers and Armstrong have been discarded, and it remains to be shown whether Nef's carbonyloxime formula (or the bimolecular formula of Steiner) or Scholl's glyoxime peroxide formula is correct. There is some doubt as to the molecular formula of fulminic acid. The existence of double salts, and the observations of L. Wohler and K. Theodorovits (_Ber._, 1905, 38, p. 345), that only compounds containing two carbon atoms yielded fulminates, points to (HCNO)2; on the other hand, Wohler (_loc. cit._ p. 1351) found that cryoscopic and electric conductivity measurements showed sodium fulminate to be NaCNO. Nef based his formula, which involves bivalent carbon, on many reactions; in particular, that silver fulminate with hydrochloric acid gave salts of formylchloridoxime, which with water gave hydroxylamine and formic acid, thus

// NOAg // N.OH C : NO OAg -> HC // --> HC // --> H.CO2H + H2N.OH, \ Cl \ OH

and also on the production from sodium nitromethane and mercuric chloride, thus CH2 : NO.Ohg --> H2O + C : NOhg(hg = 1/2Hg). H. Wieland and F.C. Palazzo (1907) support this formula, finding that methyl nitrolic acid, NO2.CH : N.OH, yielded under certain conditions fulminic acid, and vice versa (Palazzo, 1907). M.Z. Jowitschitsch (_Ann._, 1906, 347, p. 233) inclines to Scholl's formula; he found that the synthetic silver salt of glyoxime peroxide resembled silver fulminate in yielding hydroxylamine with hydrochloric acid, but differed in being less explosive, and in being soluble in nitric acid. H. Wieland and his collaborators regard "glyoxime peroxide" as an oxide of furazane (q.v.), and have shown that a close relationship exists between the nitrile oxides, furoxane, and fulminic acid (see Ann. Rep., London Chem. Soc., 1909, p. 84). _Fulminuric acid_, (HCNO)3, obtained by Liebig by boiling mercuric fulminate with water, was synthesized in 1905 by C. Ulpiani and L. Bernardini (_Gazetta_, iii. 35, p. 7), who regard it as NO2.CH(CN).CO.NH2. It deflagrates at 145 deg., and forms a characteristic cuprammonium salt.

The early history of mercuric fulminate and a critical account of its application as a detonator is given in _The Rise and Progress of the British Explosives Industry_ (International Congress of Applied Chemistry, 1909). The manufacture and modern aspects are treated in Oscar Guttmann, _The Manufacture of Explosives_, and _Manufacture of Explosives, Twenty Years' Progress_ (1909).

FULTON, ROBERT (1765-1815), American engineer, was born in 1765 in Little Britain (now Fulton, Lancaster county), Pa. His parents were Irish, and so poor that they could afford him only a very scanty education. At an early age he was bound apprentice to a jeweller in Philadelphia, but subsequently adopted portrait and landscape painting as his profession. In his twenty-second year, with the object of studying with his countryman, Benjamin West, he went to England, and there became acquainted with the duke of Bridgewater, Earl Stanhope and James Watt. Partly by their influence he was led to devote his attention to engineering, especially in connexion with canal construction; he obtained an English patent in 1794 for superseding canal locks by inclined planes, and in 1796 he published a _Treatise on the Improvement of Canal Navigation_. He then took up his residence in Paris, where he projected the first panorama ever exhibited in that city, and constructed a submarine boat, the "Nautilus," which was tried in Brest harbour in 1801 before a commission appointed by Napoleon I., and by the aid of which he was enabled to blow up a small vessel with a torpedo. It was at Paris also in 1803 that he first succeeded in propelling a boat by steam-power, thus realizing a design which he had conceived ten years previously. Returning to America he continued his experiments with submarine explosives, but failed to convince either the English, French or United States governments of the adequacy of his methods. With steam navigation he had more success. In association with Robert R. Livingston (q.v.), who in 1798 had been granted the exclusive right to navigate the waters of New York state with steam-vessels, he constructed the "Clermont," which, engined by Boulton & Watt of Birmingham, began to ply on the Hudson between New York and Albany in 1807. The privilege obtained by Livingston in 1798 was granted jointly to Fulton and Livingston in 1803, and by an act passed in 1808 the monopoly was secured to them and their associates for a period depending on the number of steamers constructed, but limited to a maximum of thirty years. In 1814-1815, on behalf of the United States government, he constructed the "Fulton," a vessel of 38 tons with central paddle-wheels, which was the first steam warship. He died at New York on the 24th of February 1815. Among Fulton's inventions were machines for spinning flax, for making ropes, and for sawing and polishing marble.

See C.D. Colden, _Life of Robert Fulton_ (New York, 1817); Robert H. Thurston, _History of the Growth of the Steam-Engine_ (New York, 1878); George H. Preble, _Chronological History of Steam Navigation_ (Philadelphia, 1883); and Mrs A.C. Sutcliffe, _Robert Fulton and the Clermont_ (New York, 1909).

FULTON, a city and the county-seat of Callaway county, Missouri, U.S.A., 25 m. N.E. of Jefferson City. Pop. (1890) 4314; (1900) 4883 (1167 negroes); (1910) 5228. It is served by the Chicago & Alton railway. The city has an important stock market and manufactures fire-brick and pottery. At Fulton are the Westminster College (Presbyterian, founded in 1853), the Synodical College for Young Women (Pres., founded in 1871), the William Woods College for Girls (Christian Church, 1890), and the Missouri school for the deaf (1851). Here, too, is a state hospital for the insane (1847), the first institution of the kind in Missouri. The place was laid out as a town in 1825 and named Volney, but in honour of Robert Fulton the present name was adopted a little later. Fulton was incorporated in 1859.

FULTON, a city of Oswego county, New York, U.S.A., on the right bank of the Oswego river, about 10 m. S. by E. of Oswego. Pop. (1900) 5281; (1905, state census) 8847; (1910) 10,480. Fulton is served by the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western, the New York Central & Hudson River, and the New York, Ontario & Western railways, by electric railway to Oswego and Syracuse and by the Oswego Canal. The city has a Carnegie library. Ample water-power is furnished by the Oswego river, which here flows in a series of rapids, and the manufactures are many in kind. On the 3rd of July 1756, on an island (afterward called Battle Island) 4 m. N. of the present city of Fulton, a British force of about 300 under Captain John Bradstreet (1711-1774) defeated an attacking force of French and Indians (numbering about 700) under De Villiers. Soon after this, Bradstreet built a fort within the present limits of Fulton. The first civilian settler came in 1793, and the first survey (which included only a part of the subsequent village) was made in 1815. Fulton was incorporated as a village in 1835, and in April 1902 was combined with the village of Oswego Falls (pop. in 1900, 2925) and was chartered as a city.

FUM, or FUNJ HWANG, one of the four symbolical creatures which in Chinese mythology are believed to keep watch and ward over the Celestial Empire. It was begotten by fire, was born in the Hill of the Sun's Halo, and its body bears inscribed on it the five cardinal virtues. It has the breast of a goose, the hindquarters of a stag, a snake's neck, a fish's tail, a fowl's forehead, a duck's down, the marks of a dragon, the back of a tortoise, the face of a swallow, the beak of a cock, is about six cubits high, and perches only on the woo-tung tree. The appearance of Fum heralds an age of universal virtue. Its figure is that which is embroidered on the dresses of some mandarins.

FUMARIC AND MALEIC ACIDS, two isomeric unsaturated acids of composition C4H4O4. _Fumaric acid_ is found in fumitory (_Fumaria officinalis_), in various fungi (_Agaricus piperatus_, &c.), and in Iceland moss. It is obtained by heating malic acid alone to 150 deg. C., or by heating it with hydrochloric acid (V. Dessaignes, _Jahresb_., 1856, p. 463) or with a large quantity of hydrobromic acids (A. Kekule, _Ann._, 1864, 130, p. 21). It may also be obtained by boiling monobromsuccinic acid with water; by the action of dichloracetic acid and water on silver malonate (T. Komnenos, _Ann._, 1883, 218, p. 169); by the cyanide synthesis from acetylene di-iodide; and by heating maleic acid to 210 deg. C. (Z. Skraup, _Monats. f. Chemie_, 1891, 12, p. 112). It crystallizes in small prisms or needles, and is practically insoluble in cold water. It sublimes to some extent at about 200 deg. C., being partially converted into maleic anhydride and water, the reaction becoming practically quantitative if dehydrating agents be used. Reducing agents (zinc and caustic alkali, hydriodic acid, sodium amalgam, &c.) convert it into succinic acid. Bromine converts it into dibromsuccinic acid. Potassium permanganate oxidizes it to racemic acid (A. Kekule and R. Anschutz, _Ber._, 1881, 14, p. 713). By long-continued heating with caustic soda at 100 deg. C. it is converted into inactive malic acid.

_Maleic acid_ is obtained by distilling malic or fumaric acids; by heating fumaric acid with acetyl chloride to 100 deg. C; or by the hydrolysis of trichlorphenomalic acid ([beta]-trichloraceto-acrylic acid) [A. Kekule, _Ann._, 1884, 223, p. 185]. It crystallizes in monoclinic prisms, which are easily soluble in water, melt at 130 deg. C., and boil at 160 deg. C., decomposing into water and maleic anhydride. When heated with concentrated hydrobromic or hydriodic acids, it is converted into fumaric acid. It yields an anilide; oxidation converts it into mesotartaric acid. Maleic anhydride is obtained by distilling fumaric acid with phosphorus pentoxide. It forms triclinic crystals which melt at 60 deg. C. and boil at 196 deg. C.

Both acids are readily esterified by the action of alkyl halides on their silver salts, and the maleic ester is readily transformed into the fumaric ester by warming with iodine, the same result being obtained by esterification of maleic acid in alcoholic solution by means of hydrochloric acid. Both acids yield acetylene by the electrolysis of aqueous solutions of their alkali salts, and on reduction both yield succinic acid, whilst by the addition of hydrobromic acid they both yield monobromsuccinic acid (R. Fittig, _Ann._, 1877, 188, p. 98). From these results it follows that the two acids are structurally identical, and the isomerism has consequently to be explained on other grounds. This was accomplished by W. Wislicenus ["Uber die raumliche Anordnung der Atome," &c., _Trans, of the Saxon Acad. of Sciences_ (Math. Phys. Section), 1887, p. 14] by an extension of the van't Hoff hypothesis (see STEREO-ISOMERISM). The formulae of the acids are written thus:

HC.CO2H HC.CO2H .. Maleic acid. .. Fumaric acid. HC.CO2H HO2C.C.H

These account for maleic acid readily yielding an anhydride, whereas fumaric acid does not, and for the behaviour of the acids towards bromine, fumaric acid yielding ordinary dibromsuccinic acid, and maleic acid the isomeric isodibromsuccinic acid.