Cinnabar is one of the earths minerals. We usually find it in heavy, earthy lumps of rosy red. The chemists tell us that it is a compound of the two elements mercury and sulphur. The bright red mineral is useful as well as handsome. It is the most important ore of the silvery liquid metal we call mercury or quicksilver.

Deposits of cinnabar have been known since ancient days in China, Cinnabar deposits have also been mined for a long time in Spain. In the part hundred yees, we have discovered rich deposits of cinnabar in our own California,