Blende
a native sulphide of zinc (ZnS). Composition: Sulphur, 32.12- 33.82; zinc, 44.67-67.46; sometimes with small amounts of iron and cadmium. It occurs in regular tetrahedra, dodecahedra, and other monometric forms; it is found also fibrous, columnar, radiated, plumose, massive, foliated, granular, etc.
Its color is either white, yellow, or brown black. Varieties of it exist in many places in this country; in Derbyshire, Cumberland, and Cornwall, England; as well as on the continent of Europe, etc.
One variety is called by the miners blackjack. Blende is called also sphalerite. Dana divides it into (1) ordinary (containing blende or sphalerite, little or no iron); (2) ferriferous (containing 10 or more per cent. of iron); (3) cadmiferous (containing cadmium).
In mining, the word is applied to the above mentioned blackjack, treated by roasting and destructive distillation in combination with charcoal in a vessel from which the air is excluded. By ac- BLENHEIM cess of air the metal burns and passes off in vapor which condenses as the white oxide, which is collected and forms a pigment known as zinc white. BLENHEIM (blen'em or blen'hīm), a village in Bavaria on the Danube. Near it was fought, Aug. 13, 1704, during the war of the Spanish Succession, the famous battle of Blenheim (or Höchstadt, from another village in the vicinity), in which Marlborough and Prince Eugene, commanding the allied forces of England and Germany (52,000 men), gained a brilliant victory over the French and Bavarians (56,000). The victors lost some 12,000 in killed and wounded; the vanquished 40,000, including prisoners, of whom Villars was one. Here, the French defeated the Austrians, June, 1800. a