Experiment XII.
The thirteen Grains melted down with the Borax into a Mass growing like Glass (almost vitrified) (X.) I gave to a sworn and very skilful Essayer of Metals at Amsterdam, to examine this whole little Mass with the greatest Accuracy, according to the Rules of Art, in Lead. Nothing fix’d remain’d of the whole Mass; so there was no Gold nor Silver in it.
Corollaries.
1. Quicksilver persists in the Fire, retaining its Nature unalterable.
2. Simple, and not separable, into different Parts by Distillation.
3. It is fixed by Fire, and seems changed in its outward Form.
4. Appearing so, in various Parts, it acquires different Degrees of Fixedness.
5. Yet none of these Parts acquired, by so strong and lasting a Fire, the Fixedness of Gold or Silver.
6. The fixating Cause is Fire passing thro’ the Glass; thus changing part of the Mercury, either by its simple Action, or by its uniting itself with the Quicksilver.
7. The Fire so acting, by 511 Distillations, by its Action or Conjunction, could not yet change the smallest Particle of the Mercury into Gold or Silver.
8. But from the Mercury so fixed by Fire, a greater Fire restores true Mercury; or the known Power of Lead makes it vanish out of the Cupell.
9. Therefore it does not appear, by these Experiments, that from Mercury and Fire so conspiring, any known Metal is produced. Those 13 Grains did not run by a Wind-Furnace; they did not persist in the Lead; they were not dissolved with the Mercury into an Amalgama.
10. Therefore Fire, by these Experiments, is not demonstrated to be the Sulphur of the Philosophers that fixes Mercury into Metals.
11. But it seems probable that the Sulphur of the Philosophers is something else very near it.
12. The fixed part is not the Feces of Mercury, nor its crude generating Sulphur; it returns into Mercury.
13. The Depuration of Mercury from the earthy Feces, and the watry Crudeness, seems scarcely to be obtained so easily by Distillation alone; perhaps by some more secret Work it is obtain’d.
14. To make Gold or Silver of Mercury, does not proceed. Ignorant Men are given up to Imagination, easy to Promises, rich in Hope. This Mercury remained Mercury.
15. Safe from the fallacious Writings and Prescriptions of the Philosophers, who promise such Things in a short Time, or a few Months from Mercury and Fire: Indeed, within the Space of many Years, I have not discovered the least Marks of a first beginning.