usual grinding and washing, it has distinct abrasive properties and can be used as a polishing powder and as a filler in paints.495 It has appeared on the market under the trade name "Milowite," and the modern exploiters of this siliceous earth seem to regard it as a new mineral product, though it is probably the same as the Melian earth that was so widely known in ancient times.
Kimolian earth took its name from the island in the Cyclades upon which it was found. Kimolos is a small island very close to Melos. Since Theophrastus only names this earth without giving any description, it cannot be identified from what he says. However, the descriptions of Kimolian earth given by later ancient writers such as Dioscorides496 and Pliny497 do identify it. Dioscorides states that Kimolian earth occurred in two varieties, white and reddish (literally, inclining to purple), and that it had a certain natural fatness. Pliny mentions its use for cleaning clothes, which at once suggests that it had the properties of a fuller's earth. The principal clayey material of this kind that occurs on the island of Kimolos is a particular variety of sepiolite, a hydrated magnesium silicate to which modern mineralogists have given the name cimolite. This has been used in modern times for cleaning cloth, and it is in all probability the same as the Kimolian earth mentioned here by Theophrastus.
The description given by Theophrastus suggests that Samian earth, which takes its name from the island of Samos off the coast of Asia Minor, was in all probability kaolin, hydrated aluminum silicate, or a clay composed mostly of kaolin. Deposits of kaolin and fine clays occur on the island, and in ancient times they were extensively used for the manufacture of ceramic ware. In section 63 there is another indication that Samian earth was kaolin, and this is discussed in the notes on that section. The descriptions given by authors who lived later than Theophrastus further support this identification. For example, Dioscorides498 mentions that Samian earth clings strongly to the tongue, a special property more or less characteristic of kaolin and of clays that are largely composed of it.
495 J. N. Wilson, Chemical Trade Journal, XCVTI (1935), 28; Sands, Clays, and Minerals, II, No. 3 (1935), 127-30.
496 V, 175 (Wellmann ed., V, 156). 4" XXXV, 195-96. 498 V, 171 (Wellmann ed., V, 153).
