Experiment solitary touching the drowning of the more base metal in the more precious.

798. I CALL drowning of metals, when that the baser metal is so incorporate with the more rich, as it can by no means be separated again; which is a kind of version, though false: as if silver should be inseparably incorporated with gold: or copper and lead with silver. The ancient electrum had in it a fifth of silver to the gold, and made a compound metal, as fit for most uses as gold, and more resplendent, and more qualified in some other properties; but then that was easily separated. This to do privily, or to make the compound pass for the rich metal simple, is an adulteration or counterfeiting: but if it be done avowedly, and without disguising, it may be a great saving of the richer metal. I remember to have heard of a man skilful in metals, that a fifteenth part of silver incorporated with gold will not be recovered by any water of separation, except you put a greater quantity of silver to draw to it the less; which, he said, is the last refuge in separations. But that is a tedious way, which no man, almost, will think on. This should be better inquired and the quantity of the fifteenth turned to a twentieth; and likewise with some little additional, that may further the intrinsic incorporation. Note, that silver in gold will be detected, by weight, compared with the dimension; but lead in silver, lead being the weightier metal, will not be detected, if you take so much the more silver as will countervail the over-weight of the lead.

Experiment solitary touching fixation of bodies.

799. GOLD is the only substance which hath nothing in it volatile, and yet melteth without much difficulty. The melting sheweth that it is not jejune, or scarce in spirit. So that the fixing of it is not want of spirit to fly out, but the equal spreading of the tangible parts, and the close coacervation of them: whereby they have the less appetite, and no means at all to issue forth. It were good therefore to try,

whether glass remolten do lose any weight? for the parts in glass are evenly spread; but they are not so close as in gold; as we see by the easy admission of light, heat, and cold; and by the smallness of the weight. There be other bodies fixed, which have little or no spirit; so as there is nothing to fly out; as we see in the stuff whereof coppels are made, which they put into furnaces, upon which fire worketh not: so that there are three causes of fixation; the even spreading both of the spirits and tangible parts, the closeness of the tangible parts, and the jejuneness or extreme comminution of spirits: of which three, the two first may be joined with a nature liquefiable, the last not.

Experiment solitary touching the restless nature of things in themselves, and their desire to change.

800. It is a profound contemplation in nature, to consider of the emptiness, as we may call it, or insatisfaction of several bodies, and of their appetite to take in others. Air taketh in lights, and sounds, and smells, and vapours; and it is most manifest, that it doth it with a kind of thirst, as not satisfied with its own former consistence; for else it would never receive them in so suddenly and easily. Water, and all liquors do hastily receive dry and more terrestrial bodies, proportionable: and dry bodies, on the other side, drink in waters and liquors: so that, as it was well said by one of the ancients, of earthy and watery substances, one is a glue to another. Parchment, skins, cloth, etc. drink in liquors, though themselves be entire bodies, and not comminuted, as sand and ashes, nor apparently porous: metals themselves do receive in readily strong waters; and strong waters likewise do readily pierce into metals and stones and that strong water will touch upon gold, that will not touch upon silver, and e converso. And gold, which seemeth by the weight to be the closest and most solid body, doth greedily drink in quicksilver. And it seemeth, that this reception of other bodies is not violent: for it is many times reciprocal,

and as it were with consent. Of the cause of this, and to what axiom it may be referred, consider attentively; for as for the pretty assertion, that matter is like a common strumpet, that desireth all forms, it is but a wandering notion. Only flame doth not content itself to take in any other body, but either to overcome and turn another body into itself, as by victory; or itself to die, and go out.

THE END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

C. Baldwin, Printer, New Bridge-street, London.