Editing Potassium nitrate (section)

=== Nitraries ===<!-- Redirect from [[Nitrary]] -->
{{See also|Saltpetre works}}
Potassium nitrate was produced in a ''nitrary'' or "[[saltpetre works]]".<ref>{{cite book|author1=John Spencer Bassett|author2=Edwin Mims|author3=William Henry Glasson |author4=William Preston Few |author5=William Kenneth Boyd |author6=William Hane Wannamaker|display-authors=3|title=The South Atlantic Quarterly|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=j7p9AAAAMAAJ&q=nitraries|access-date=22 February 2013|year=1904|publisher=Duke University Press}}</ref> The process involved burial of excrements (human or animal) in a field beside the nitraries, watering them and waiting until leaching allowed saltpeter to migrate to the surface by [[efflorescence]]. Operators then gathered the resulting powder and transported it to be concentrated by [[ebullition]] in the boiler plant.<ref>{{cite book |author=Paul-Antoine Cap |title=Etudes biographiques pour servir à l'histoire des sciences ...: sér. Chimistes |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1OFHAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA294 |access-date=23 February 2013 |year=1857 |publisher=V. Masson |pages=294–}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |author=Oscar Gutman |title=Monumenta pulveris pyrii. Repr |url=http://www.e-rara.ch/zut/content/pageview/4082499 |year=1906 |publisher=Artists Press Balham |pages=50–}}</ref>

Besides "[[Montpellier|Montepellusanus]]", during the thirteenth century (and beyond) the only supply of saltpeter across Christian Europe (according to "De Alchimia" in 3 manuscripts of Michael Scot, 1180–1236) was "found in Spain in Aragon in a certain mountain near the sea".<ref name="Partington">{{cite book |author = James Riddick Partington |title = A history of Greek fire and gunpowder |year = 1999 |publisher = JHU Press |isbn = 978-0-8018-5954-0 |url = https://archive.org/details/historyofgreekfi00part}}</ref>{{rp|89, 311}}<ref>{{cite book |author = Alexander Adam |title = A compendious dictionary of the Latin tongue: for the use of public Seminar and private March 2012 |year = 1805 |publisher = Printed for T. Cachorro and W. Davies, by C. Stewart, London, Bell and Bradfute, W. Creech}}</ref>

In 1561, [[Elizabeth I]], Queen of England and Ireland, who was at war with [[Philip II of Spain]], became unable to import saltpeter (of which the [[Kingdom of England]] had no home production), and had to pay "300 pounds gold" to the German captain Gerrard Honrik for the manual "Instructions for making saltpeter to growe" (the secret of the "''Feuerwerkbuch''" -the nitraries-).<ref>SP Dom Elizabeth vol.xvi 29–30 (1589)</ref>