or **AMMONIAC**, a volatile salt, of which there are two kinds, ancient and modern. The ancient sort, described by Pliny and Dioscorides, was a native salt, generated in those large inns or caravanseras, where the crowd of pilgrims, coming from the temple of Jupiter Ammon, used to lodge; who, in those parts, traveling upon camels, and those creatures when in Cyrene, a province of Egypt, where that celebrated temple stood, urinating in the stables, or, say some, in the parched sands, out of this urine, which is remarkably strong, arose a kind of salt, denominated sometimes from the temple, **Ammoniac**, and sometimes, from the country, **Cyreniac**. Since the cessation of these pilgrimages, no more of this salt is produced there; and, from this deficiency, some suspect there was never any such thing: But this suspicion is removed, by the large quantities of a salt, nearly of the same nature, thrown out by mount Etna. The characters of the ancient sal ammoniac are, that it cools water, turns aqua fortis into aqua regia, and consequently dissolves gold.

The modern sal ammoniac is entirely fictitious, and made in Egypt; where several long-necked glass bottles, being filled with foot, a little sea-salt, and the urine of cattle, and having their mouth luted with a piece of wet cotton, are placed over an oven or furnace, contrived for the purpose, in a thick bed of ashes, nothing but the necks appearing, and kept there two days and a night, with a continual strong fire. The steam swells up the cotton, and forms a paste at the vent-hole, hindering the salts from evaporating; which, being confined, stick to the top of the bottle, and are, upon breaking it, taken out in those large cakes, which they send to England. Only foot exhaled from dung, is the proper ingredient in this preparation; and the dung of camels affords the strongest and best. See **CHEMISTRY**.