Crossword-Solution: ALUDEL 6 letters, 14 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 7

The Moors probably extracted mercury at Almaden, from the eighth to the twelfth century, by the use of furnaces called "xabecas," which latter, in the fourteenth century, were still employed by the Christians, who continued them till the seventeenth century, when German workmen replaced them by "reverberatory" furnaces, which in turn were superseded in 1646 by aludel or Bustamente furnaces.

This system was also applied at the Guancavelica mines, discovered in Peru in 1566, where the xabecas were abandoned in 1633, being replaced by the furnaces invented by Lope Saavedra Barba, which there were called "busconiles," while in Spain they were named Bustamente furnaces, and elsewhere aludel furnaces.

The first cost is stated to be more than ten times greater than that of an aludel furnace, while the capacity is only 50 per cent.

Alcohol, alembic, alkali, aludel, and other similar terms, are evidently of Arabic origin; nor should it be forgotten that the characters used for drugs, essences, extracts, and medicines, the import of which is now almost entirely unknown (and which are consequently invested, in vulgar estimation, with occult powers), are all to be traced to the same source.