SANDARACH, in Natural History, a very beautiful native fossil, though too often confounded with the common facitious red arsenic, and with the red matter formed by melting the common yellow orpiment.
It is a pure substance, of a very even and regular structure, is throughout of that colour which our dyers term an orange scarlet, and is considerably transparent even in the thickest pieces. But though, with respect to colour, it has the advantage of cinnabar while in the mass, it is vastly inferior to it when both are reduced to powder. It is moderately hard, and remarkably heavy; and, when exposed to a moderate heat, melts and flows like oil: if set on fire, it burns very briskly.
It is found in Saxony and Bohemia, in the copper and silver mines; and is sold to the painters, who find it a very fine and valuable red: but its virtues or qualities in medicine are no more ascertained at this time than those of the yellow orpiment.