Asbestos
A mineral of white or gray color, appearing almost like a vegetable substance, because of its fibrous, flexible, and delicate texture. It is incombustible, and the ancients wove it into cloth in which to preserve the ashes of bodies burned on the funeral pyre. There are other varieties of this mineral, all of which pertain to the different species of hornblende, and consist chiefly of silica, magnesia, lime, and oxide of iron. Its uses for manufacture into incombustible material have now become too numerous for mention here. See REFRACTORY MATERIALS.
Ashes is what remains of animal or vegetable substance after burning with free access of air. The ashes of organic substances consist of the fixed salts contained in them--land-plants yielding salts of potash, etc., and sea-plants soda, with some iodine. Turf contains alkalies and some sand; so also does coal, with the addition of some iron occasionally. See POTASH; ALKALIES.