Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/218

 quantity of lycopodium con be added to the starch powder with great benefit.

So far as a simple powder is concerned, the one we have now given is sufficient, but there is another use for which these preparations are demanded, somewhat more ambitious. It is to whiten the skin, to lend a hue to the surface which nature has withheld, or taken back.

This brings us at once to the second part of our subject, that in which we proposed to treat of those cosmetic arts, invented to hide the victories which Time has already won. Not to waste space in prefatory remarks, we commence at once with:—

MEANS FOR WHITENING THE SKIN.

These are numerous enough to allow considerable liberty of choice. That which we are inclined to name first as preferable to the others, is ''powdered French chalk''. This is, in fact, not chalk at all, but a fine variety of soapstone, obtained at Briançon, a small village in the French Alps, and therefore known in commerce as craie de Briançon. It is very fine, very white, and very adhesive. It does not injure the skin in the least, and does not lose it color by the secretions of the body, nor by exposure to coal-gases, or sunlight.

As the pure Briançon stone is not always to be had, we have taken the pains to examine specimens from