the Watch ought to have ascribed to them what indeed flows from their Coordination and Contrivance CHAP. VII THE last defect I observe in the Chymical Doctrine of Qualities is that in many cases it agrees not well with the Phaenomena of Nature and that by one or both of these ways First there are divers changes of Qualities wherein one may well expect that a Chymical Principle should have a great stroak and yet it does not at all appear to have so He that considers what great operations divers of the Hermeticks ascribe to this or that Hypostatical Principle and how many Qualities according to them must from it be derived can scarce do other than expect that a great change as to those Qualities happening in a mixt body should at least be accompany'd with some notable action of or alteration in the Principle And yet I have met with many instances wherein Qualities are produced or abolished or very much altered without any manifest introduction expulsion or considerable change of the Principle whereon that Quality is said to depend or perhaps of either of the two others As when a piece of fine silver that having been neald in the fire and suffer'd to cool leisurely is very flexible is made stiff and hard to bend barely by a few stroaks of a hammer And a string of a Lute acquires or loses a sympathy as they call it with another string of the same or another Instrument barely by being either stretched so as to make an Unison with it or screw'd up or let down beyond or beneath that degree of Tension To multiply instances of this kind would be to anticipate those you will hereafter meet with in their due places And therefore I shall pass on from the first sort of Phaenomena that favour not the Chymical Hypothesis about Qualities to the other which consists of those wherein either that does not happen which according to their Hypothesis ought to happen or the contrary happens to what according to their Hypothesis may justly be expected Of this you will meet with instances hereafter I shall now trouble you but with one the better to declare my meaning 'T is not unknown to those Chymists that work much in Silver and in Copper that the former will endure Ignition and become red-hot in the fire before it will be brought to fusion and the latter is yet far more difficult to be melted down than the other yet if you separately dissolve those two metalls in Aqua fortis and by evaporation reduce them to Crystalls these will be brought to fusion in a very little time and with a very moderate Heat without breaking the glasses that contain them If you ask a vulgar Chymist the cause of this facility of fusion he will probably tell you without scruple that 't is from the saline parts of the Aqua fortis which being imbodied in the metals and of a very fusible nature impart that easiness of fusion to the metals they are mixt with According to which plausible explication one might well expect that if the saline Corpuscles were exquisitly mingled with Tin they would make it far more fusible than of it self it is And yet as I have elsewhere noted when I put Tin into a convenient quantity of Aqua fortis the metal being corroded subsided as is usual in the form of whites of eggs which being well dried the Tinn was so far from being grown more fusible by the addition of the saline particles of the Menstruum that whereas 't is known that simple Tin will melt long before it come to be red-hot this prepar'd Tin would endure for a good while not only a thorow ignition but the blast of a pair of double bellows which we usually imploy'd to melt Silver and Copper it self without being at all brought to fusion And as for those Spagyrists that admit as most of them are granted to do that all kinds of metals may be turned into Gold by a very small proportion of what they call the Philosophers Elixir one may I think shew them from their own concessions that divers Qualities may be changed even in such constant bodies as Metals without the addition of any considerable proportion of the simple Ingredients to which they are wont to ascribe those Qualities provided the Agent as an efficient rather than as a material Cause be able to make a great change in the Mechanical affections of the parts whereof the metal it acts on is made up Thus if we suppose a pound of Silver a pound of Lead and a pound of Iron to be transmuted into Gold each by a grain of the powder of projection this tinging powder as a material Cause is inconsiderable by reason of the smallness of its bulk and as an efficient cause it works differing and even contrary effects according to the disposition wherein it finds the metal to be transmuted and the changes it produces in the constituent Texture of it Thus it brings Quick-silver to be fixt which it was not before and deprives it of the Fluidity which it had before it brings Silver to be indissolvable in Aqua fortis which readily dissolved it before and dissoluble in Aqua Regis which before would not touch it and which is very considerable to our present purpose whereas it makes Iron much more fusible than Mars it makes Lead much less fusible than whilest it retained its pristine form since Saturn melts ere it come to ignition which Gold requires to bring it to fusion But this is proposed only as an Argument ad hominem till the Truth of the transmutation of metals into Gold by way of projection be sufficiently proved and the circumstances and phaenomena of it particularly declared I must not forget to take notice that some learned modern Chymists would be thought to explicate divers of the Changes that happen to Bodies in point of Odours Colours c. by saying that in such alterations the Sulphur or other Hypostatical Principle is intraverted or extraverted or as others speak inverted But I confess to me these seem to be rather new terms then real explications For to omit divers of the Arguments mentioned in this present Treatise that may be applied to this way of solving the Phaenomena of Qualities one may justly object that the supposed Extraversion or Intraversion of Sulphur can by no means reach to give an account of so great a variety of Odours Colours and other Qualities as may be found in the changed portions of matter we are speaking of And which is more what they call by these and the like names cannot be done without Local motion transposing the particles of the matter and consequently producing in it a change of Texture which is the very thing we would infer and which being supposed we may grant Sulphur to be oftentimes actually present in the altered Bodies without allowing it to be always necessary to produce the alterations in them since Corpuscles so condition'd and contex'd would
will at least indispose the touching corpuscles to suffer a total divulsion may appear probable from what we lately noted of the cohesion of pieces of marble and glass and from some other Phaenomena belonging to the History of Firmness from which we may properly enough borrow some instances as least for illustration in the Doctrine of Fixtness in regard that usually though not always the same things that make a body Firm give it some degree of Fixity by keeping it from being dissipated by the wonted degrees of Heat and Agitation it meets with in the Air. But to return to the contact we were speaking of I think it not impossible though you may perhaps think it strange that the bare operation of the Fire may in some cases procure a Cohesion among the particles and consequently make them more Fixt as well as in others disjoyn them and thereby make them more Volatile For as in some bodies the figures and sizes of the corpuscles may be such that the action of the fire may rub or tear off the little beards or hooks or other particles that intangle them and by that means make it more easie for the corpuscles to be disingaged and fly upwards so in other bodies the size and shape of the corpuscles may be such that the agitation caused by the fire may rub them one against the other so as by mutual attrition to grind as 't were their surfaces and make them so broad and smooth if not also so flat as that the contact of the corpuscles shall come to be made according to a large portion of their superficies from whence will naturally follow a firm Cohesion Which I shall illustrate by what we may observe among those that grind glasses for Telescopes and Microscopes For these Artificers by long rubbing a piece of glass against a metalline Dish or concave Vessel do by this attrition at length bring the two bodies to touch one another in so many parts of their congruous surfaces that they will stick firmly to one another so as sometimes to oblige the Work-man to use violence to disjoyn them And this instance which is not the sole I could alleage may suffice to shew how a Cohesion of corpuscles may be produced by the mutual adaptation of their congruous surfaces And if two grosser corpuscles or a greater number of smaller be thus brought to stick together you will easily believe their Aggregate will prove too heavy or unwieldy for avolation And to shew that the fire may effect a laevigation in the surfaces of some corpuscles I have sometimes caused Minium and some other calces that I judged convenient to be melted for a competent time in a vehement fire conveniently administred whereby according to expectation that which was before a dull and incoherent powder was reduced into much grosser corpuscles multitudes of whose grains appeared smooth glittering and almost specular like those of fine litharge of gold and the masses that these grains composed were usually solid enough and of difficult fusion And when we make glass of Lead per se which I elsewhere teach you how to doe 't is plain that the particles of the Lead are reduced to a great smoothness since wheresoever you break the glass the surfaces produced at the crack will not be jagged but smooth and considerably specular Nor do I think it impossible that even when the fire does not make any great attrition of the Corpuscles of the body to be fixt it may yet occasion their sticking together because by long tumbling them up and down in various manners it may at length after multitudes of revolutions and differing occursions bring those of their surfaces together which by reason of their breadth smoothness or congruity of figure are fit for mutual cohesion and when once they come to stick there is no necessity that the same causes that were able to make them pass by one another when their contact was but according to an inconsiderable part of their surfaces should have the same effect now when their contact is full though perhaps if the degree of fire were much increased a more vehement agitation would surmount this cohesion and dissipate again these clusters of coalescent corpuscles These conjectures will perhaps appear less extravagant if you consider what happens in the preparation of Quick-silver praecipitated per se For there running Mercury being put into a conveniently shaped Glass is exposed to a moderate fire for a considerable time For I have sometimes found six or seven weeks to be too short a one In this degree of fire the parts are variously tumbled and made many of them to ascend till convening into drops on the sides of the glass their weight carries them down again but at length after many mutual occursions if not also attritions some of the parts begin to stick together in the form of a red powder and then more and more Mercurial particles are fastened to it till at length all or by much the greater part of the Mercury is reduced into the like Praecipitate which by this cohesion of the parts being grown more fixt will not with the same degree of Heat be made to rise and circulate as the Mercury would before and yet as I elsewhere note I have found by trial that with a greater and competent degree of heat this Praecipitate per se would without the help of any volatilizing additament be easily reduced into running Mercury again Chymists and Physicians who agree in supposing this Praecipitate to be made without any additament will perchance scarce be able to give a more likely account of the consistency and degree of Fixity that is obtained in the Mercury in which since no body is added to it there appears not to be wrought any but a Mechanical change And though I confess I have not been without suspicions that in Philosophical strictness this Praecipitate may not be made per se but that some penetrating igneous particles especially saline may have associated themselves with the Mercurial Corpuscles yet even upon this supposition it may be said that these particles contribute to the effect that is produced but by facilitating or procuring by their opportune Interposition the mutual Cohesion of Corpuscles that would not otherwise stick to one another Perhaps it will not be altogether impertinent to add on this occasion that as for the generality of Chymists as well others as Helmontians that assert the Transmutation of all metalls into Gold by the Philosopher's Stone me thinks they may grant it to be probable that a new and fit Contexture of the parts of a volatile body may especially by procuring a full contact among them very much contribute to make it highly fixt For to omit what is related by less credible Authours 't is averred upon his own trial by Helmont who pretended not to the Elixir that a grain of the powder that was given him transmuted a pound if I mis-remember not of running Mercury where the
as to investigate the Mechanical Causes of Precipitation OF THE MECHANICAL CAUSES OF CHYMICAL PRECIPITATION CHAP. I. BY Precipitation is here meant such an agitation or motion of a heterogeneous liquor as in no long time makes the parts of it subside and that usually in the form of a powder or other consistent body As on many occasions Chymists call the substance that is made to fall to the bottom of the liquor the Precipitate so for brevity sake we shall call the body that is put into the liquor to procure that subsiding the Precipitant as also that which is to be struck down the Precipitable substance or matter and the liquor wherein it swims before the separation the Menstruum or Solvent When a hasty fall of a heterogeneous body is procured by a Precipitant the Operation is called Precipitation in the proper or strict sense But when the separation is made without any such addition or the substance separated from the fluid part of the liquor instead of subsiding emerges then the word is used in a more comprehensive but less proper acceptation As for the Causes of Precipitation the very name it self in its Chymical sense having been scarce heard of in the Peripatetic Schools it is not to be expected that they should have given an account of the Reasons of the thing And 't is like that those few Aristotelians that have by their converse with the laboratories or writings of Chymists taken notice of this Operation would according to their custom on such occasions have recourse for the explication of it to some secret sympathy or antipathy between the bodies whose action and reaction intervenes in this Operation But if this be the way proposed of accounting for it I shall quickly have occasion to say somewhat to it in considering the ways proposed by the Chymists who were wont to refer Precipitation either as is most usual to a sympathy betwixt the Precipitating body and the Menstruum which makes the Solvent run to the embraces of the Precipitant and so let fall the particles of the body sustained before or with others to a great antipathy or contrariety between the acid salt of the Menstruum and the fixed salt of the Oil or solution of calcined Tartar which is the most general and usual Precipitant they imploy But I see not how either of these causes will either reach to all the Phaenomena that have been exhibited or give a true account even of some of those to which it seems applicable For first in Precipitations wherein what they call a sympathy between the liquors is supposed to produce the effect this admired sympathy does not in my apprehension evince such a mysterious occult Quality as is presumed but rather consists in a greater congruity as to bigness shape motion and pores of the minute parts between the Menstruum and the Precipitant than between the same Solvent and the body it kept before dissolved And though this sympathy rightly explained may be allowed to have an interest in some such Precipitations as let fall the dissolved body in its pristine nature and form and only reduced into minute powder yet I find not that in the generality of Precipitations this Doctrine will hold For in some that we have made of Gold and Silver in proper Menstruums after the subsiding matter had been well washed and dried several Precipitates of Gold made some with oil of Tartar which abounds with a fixed salt and is the usual Precipitant and some with an Urinous Spirit which works by Vertue of a salt highly fugitive or Volatile I found the powder to exceed the weight of the Gold and Silver I had put to dissolve and the Eye it self sufficiently discovers such Precipitates not to be meer metalline powders but Compositions whose consisting not as hath been by some body suspected of the combined Salts alone but of the metalline parts also may be strongly concluded not only from the ponderousness of divers of them in reference to their bulk but also manifestly from the reduction of true malleable metals from several of them CHAP. II. THE other Chymical way of explicating Precipitations may in a right sence be made use of by a Naturalist on some particular occasions But I think it much too narrow and defective as 't is in a general way proposed to be fit to be acquiesced in For first 't is plain that 't is not only Salt of Tartar and other fixed Alcalies that precipitate most bodies that are dissolved in acid Menstruums as in making of Aurum fulminans oil of Tartar precipitates the Gold out of Aqua Regis But acid liquors themselves do on many occasions no less powerfully precipitate metals and other bodies out of one another Thus spirit of Salt as I have often tried precipitates Silver out of Aqua fortis The corrosive Spirit of Nitre copiously precipitates that white powder whereof they make Bezoardicum Minerale Spirit or oil of Sulphur made by a glass-bell precipitates Corals Pearls c. dissolved in Spirit of Vinegar as is known to many Chymists who now use this Oleum Sulphuris per Campanam to make the Magistery of Pearls c. for which vulgar Chymists imploy Oleum Tartari per deliquium I have sometimes made a Menstruum wherein though there were both Acid and Alcalizate Salts yet I did not find that either acid Spirits or oil of Tartar or even Spirit of Urine would precipitate the dissolved substances And I have observed both that Salts of a contrary nature will precipitate bodies out of the same Menstruum as not only Salt of Tartar but Sea-salt being dissolved will precipitate each other and each of them apart will precipitate Silver out of Aqua fortis and that even where there is a confessed contrariety betwixt two liquors it may be so ordered that neither of them shall precipitate what is dissolved by the other of which I shall have occasion to give ere long a remarkable instance But it will best appear that the abovementioned Theories of the Peripateticks and Chymists are at least insufficient to solve the Phaenomena many of which were probably not known to most of them and perhaps not weigh'd by any if we proceed to observe the Mechanical ways by which Precipitations may be accounted for whereof I shall at present propose some Number and say somewhat of each of them apart not that I think all of them to be equally important and comprehensive or that I absolutely deny that any one of them may be reduced to some of the other but that I think it may better elucidate the subject to treat of them severally when I shall have premised that I would not thence infer that though for the most part Nature does principally effect Precipitations by one or other of these ways yet in divers cases she may not imploy two or more of them about performing the operation To precipitate the Corpuscles of a metal out of a Menstruum wherein being once throughly dissolved
presented me by a Gentleman that had newly brought it from the West-Indies I found it whilst 't was fresh to have a fragrancy suitable to the name that was given it There is also a sort of Rats in Muscovy whose skins whereof I have seen several have a smell that has procured them the name of Musk-Rats To which I know not whether we may not add the mention of a certain sort of Ducks which some call Musk-Ducks because at a certain season of the year if they be chaf'd by violent motion they will under the wing emit a musky in stead of a sweaty sent which upon trial I perceived to be true On the other side I have known a certain Wood growing in the Indies which especially when the sent is excited by rubbing stinks so rankly and so like Paracelsus's Zibetum Occidentale stercus Humanum that one would swear it were held under his Nose And since I have been speaking of good sents produced by unlikely means I shall not pretermit this Observation that though generally the fire impresses a strong offensive smell which Chymists therefore call Empyreumatical upon the odorous bodies that it works strongly on yet the constitution of a body may be such that the new Contexture that is made of its parts even by the violence of the fire shall be fit to afford Effluviums rather agreeable to the organs of smelling than any way offensive For I remember that having for a certain purpose distilled Saccharum Saturni in a Retort with a strong fire I then obtained for I dare not undertake for the like success to every Experimenter besides a piercing and Empyreumatical Liquour that was driven over into the Receiver a good Lump of a Caput Mortuum of a grayish colour which notwithstanding the strong impression it had received from the fire was so far from having any Empyreumatical sent that it had a pleasing one and when 't was broken smelt almost like a fine Cake new baked and broken whilst yet warm And as the fire notwithstanding the Empyreuma it is wont to give to almost all the bodies it burns may yet be reduced to confer a good smell on some of them if they be fitted upon such a contexture of their parts to emit steams of such a nature whatever were the efficient cause of such a contexture so we observe in the Musk animal that Nature in that Cat or rather Deer though it properly belong to neither kind produces Musk by such a change as is wont in other Animals to produce a putrefactive stink So that provided a due constitution of parts be introduced into a portion of matter it may on that account be endowed with noble and desirable Sents or other Qualities though that Constitution were introduced by such unlikely means as Combustion and Putrefaction themselves In Confirmation of which I shall subjoyn in the insuing account a notable though casual Phaenomenon that occurr'd to a couple of Virtuosi of my Acquaintance An eminent Professor of Mathematicks affirmed to me that chancing one day in the heat of Summer with another Mathematician who I remember was present when this was told to pass by a large Dunghil that was then in Lincolns-Inn-fields when they came to a certain distance from it they were both of them surprized to meet with a very strong smell of Musk occasioned probably by a certain degree or a peculiar kind of Putrefaction which each was for a while shy of taking notice of for fear his Companion should have laughed at him for it but when they came much nearer the Dunghill that pleasing smell was succeeded by a stink proper to such a heap of Excrements This puts me in mind of adding that though the excrements of Animals and particularly their sweat are usually foetid yet that 't is not the nature of an excrement but the constitutions that usually belong to them make them so hath seemed probable to me upon some Observations For not to mention what is related of Alexander the Great I knew a Gentleman of a very happy Temperature of body whose sweat upon a critical examination wherein I made use also of a surprize I found to be fragrant which was confirmed also by some Learned men of my acquaintance and particularly a Physician that lay with him Though Civet usually passes for a Perfume and as such is wont to be bought at a great rate yet it seems to be but a clammy excrement of the Animal that affords it which is secreted into Bags provided by Nature to receive it And I the rather mention Civet because it usually affords a Phaenomenon that agrees very well with the Mechanical Doctrine concerning Odours though it do not demonstrate it For when I have had the curiosity to visit divers of those Civet-Cats as they call them though they have heads liker Foxes than Cats I observed that a certain degree of Laxity if I may so style it of the odorous Atmosphere was requisite to make the smell fragrant For when I was near the Cages where many of them were kept together or any great Vessel full of Civet the smell probably by the plenty and perhaps the over-brisk motion of the effluvia was rather rank and offensive than agreeable whereas when I removed into the next room or to some other convenient distance the steams being less crowded and farther from their fountain presented themselves to my Nostrills under the notion of a Perfume And not to dismiss this our Eleventh Experiment without touching once more upon Musk I shall add that an Ingenious Lady to whom I am nearly related shewed me an odd Monkey that had been presented her as a rarity by the then Admiral of England and told me among other things that she had observed in it that being sick he would seek for Spiders as his proper remedies for some of which he then seemed to be looking and thereby gave her occasion to tell me this which when he had eaten the alteration it made in him would sometimes fill the room with a musky sent But he had not the good luck to light on any whilst my visit lasted EXPER. XII To heighten good smells by Composition 'T IS well known to Perfumers and is easie to be observed that Amber-greece alone though esteemed the best and richest perfume that is yet known in the world has but a very faint and scarce a pleasant sent And I remember that I have seen some hundreds of ounces together newly brought from the East-Indies but if I had not been before acquainted with the smell of Amber-greece alone and had had onely the vulgar conceit of it that 't is the best and strongest of perfumes my Nostrills would scarce have made me suspect those lumps to have been any thing a-kin to Amber-greece But if a due proportion of Musk or even Civet be dexterously mixt with Amber the latent fragrancy though it be thereby somewhat compounded will quickly be called forth and exceedingly heightned And indeed 't is not
three either Gold or Silver or Crystal or Venetian Talck or some other bodies that I elsewhere name yet these bodies are endowed with divers Qualities as the two former with Fusibleness and Malleability and all of them with Weight and Fixity so that in these and the like bodies whence Chymists have not made it yet appear that their Salt Sulphur and Mercury can be truly and adequately separated 't will scarce be other than precarious to derive the malleableness colour and other Qualities of such bodies from those Principles Under this Head I consider also that a great part of the Chymical Doctrine of Qualities is bottom'd on or supposes besides their newly questioned Analysis by fire some other things which as far as I know have not yet been well proved and I question whether they ever will be One of their main Suppositions is that this or that Quality must have its 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Sennertus the Learnedst Champion of this opinion calls it or some particular material Principle to the participation of which as of the primary native and genuine subject all other bodies must owe it But upon this point having purposely discoursed elsewhere I shall now onely observe that not to mention Local motion and Figure I think 't will be hard to shew what is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of Gravity Volatility Heat Sonorousness Transparency and Opacity which are Qualities to be indifferently met with in bodies whether simple or mixt And whereas the Spagyrists are wont to argue that because this or that Quality is not to be derived truly from this or that particular Principle as Salt for instance and Mercury therefore it must needs be derivable from the third as Sulphur This way of arguing involves a farther Supposition than that newly examined For it implies that every Quality in a compounded body must arise from some one of the tria prima whereas experience assures us that bodies may by Composition obtain Qualities that were not to be found in any of the separate Ingredients As we see in painting that though blew and yellow be neither of them green yet their mixture will be so And though no single Sound will make an octave or diapason yet two sounds whose proportion is double will have an eighth And Tinn and Copper melted and mingled together in a due proportion will make a bell-metal far more sonorous than either of them was before 'T is obvious enough for Chymists themselves to observe that though Lead be an insipid body and Spirit of Vinegar a very sharp one yet Saccharum Saturni that is compounded out of these two has a sweetness that makes it not ill deserve its name But this ill-grounded Supposition of the Chymists is extended farther in an usual Topic of theirs according to which they conclude That I know not how many Qualities as well manifest as occult must be explicated by their tria prima because they are not explicable by the four elements of the Peripateticks To make which argumentation valid it must be proved which I fear it will never be that there are no other wayes by which those Qualities may be explicated but by a determinate number of Material Principles whether four or three Besides that till they have shewn that such Qualities may be intelligibly explicated by their Principles the objection will lye as strong for the Aristotelians against them as for them against the Aristotelians CHAP. II. NExt I consider that there are divers Qualities even in mixt bodies wherein it does not appear that the use of the Chymical Doctrine is Necessary As for instance when pure Gold is by Heat onely brought to fusion and consequently to the state of fluidity and upon the remission of that heat grows a solid and consistent body again what addition or expulsion or change of any of the tria prima does appear to be the cause of this change of consistence Which is easie to be accounted for according to the Mechanical way by the vehement agitation that the fire makes of the minute parts of the Gold to bring it to fusion and the cohesion of those parts by vertue of their gravity and fitness to adhere to one another when that agitation ceases When Venice Glass is meerly by being beaten to pouder deprived of its Transparency and turned into a body opacous and white what need or use of the tria prima have we in the explication of this Phaenomenon Or of that other which occurs when by barely melting down this white and opacous body it is deprived of its opacity and colour and becomes diaphanous And of this sort of Instances you will meet with divers in the following Notes about particular Qualities for which reason I shall forbear the mention of them here CHAP. III. I Observe too that the Spagyrical Doctrine of Qualities is Insufficient and too narrow to reach to all the Phaenomena or even to all the notable ones that ought to be explicable by them And this Insufficiency I find to be two-fold for first there are divers Qualities of which Chymists will not so much as attempt to give us explications and of other particular Qualities the explications such as they are that they give us are often very deficient and unsatisfactory and do not sometimes so much as take notice of divers considerable Phaenomena that belong to the Qualities whereof they pretend to give an account of which you will meet with divers Instances in the insuing Notes And therefore I shall onely to declare my meaning the better invite you to observe with me that though Gold be the body they affect to be most conversant with yet it will be very hard to shew how the specific weight of Gold can be deduced from any or all of the three Principles since Mercury it self that is of bodies known to us the heaviest next to Gold is so much lighter than Gold that whereas I have usually found Mercury to be to an equal weight of water somewhat though little less than fourteen to one I find pure Gold to be about nineteen times as heavy as so much water Which will make it very difficult not to say impossible for them to explain how Gold should barely by participating of Mercury which is a body much lighter than it self obtain that great specific gravity we find it to have for the two other Hypostatical Principles we know are far lighter than Mercury And I think it would much puzzle the Chymists to give us any examples of a compounded body that is specifically heavier than the heaviest of the Ingredients that it is made up of And this is the first kind of Insufficiency I was taking notice of in the Chymical Doctrine of Qualities The other is That there are several bodies which the most Learned among themselves confess not to consist of their tria prima and yet are indowed with Qualities which consequently are not in those subjects to be explicated by the tria prima which are
but lightly glance upon a couple of imperfections that more particularly relate to the Doctrine of Qualities And first I do not think it a Convincing Argument that is wont to be imployed by the Aristotelians for their Elements as well as by the Chymists for their Principles that because this or that Quality which they ascribe to an Element or a Principle is found in this or that body which they call mixt therefore it must owe that Quality to the participation of that Principle or Element For the same Texture of parts or other modification of matter may produce the like Quality in the more simple and the more compounded body and they may both separately derive it from the same Cause and not one from the Participation of the other So Water and Earth and Metals and Stones c. are heavy upon the account of the common Cause of Gravity and not because the rest partake of the Earth as may appear in Elementary water which is as simple a body as it and yet is heavy So water and oil and exactly deflegm'd Spirit of Wine and Mercury and also Metals and Glass of Antimony and Minium or calcin'd Lead whilest these three are in fusion are fluid being made so by the variously determined motions of their minute parts and other Causes of Fluidity and not by the participation of water since the arid Calces of Lead and Antimony are not like to have retained in the fire so volatile a liquor as water and since Fluidity is a Quality that Mercury enjoys in a more durable manner than Water it self For that metalline liquor as also Spirit of Wine well Rectified will not be brought to freeze with the highest degree of Cold of our sharpest winters though a far less degree of Cold would make water cease to be fluid and turn it into Ice To this I shall only add in the second place that 't is not unpleasant to see how arbitrarily the Peripateticks derive the Qualities of bodies from their four Elements as if to give an instance in the lately named Quality Liquidity you shew them exactly deflegmed Spirit of Wine and ask them whence it has its great Fluidness they will tell you from water which yet is far less fluid than it and this spirit of wine it self is much less so than the flame into which the spirit of wine is easily resoluble But if you ask whence it becomes totally inflammable they must tell you from the fire and yet the whole body at least as far as sense can discover is fluid and the whole body becomes flame and then is most fluid of all so that fire and water as contrary as they make them must both be by vast odds predominant in the same body This spirit of wine also being a liquor whose least parts that are sensible are actually heavy and compose a Liquor which is seven or eight hundred times as heavy as Air of the same bulk which yet experience shews not to be devoid of weight must be supposed to abound with Earthy particles and yet this spirituous liquor may in a trice become Flame which they would have to be the lightest body in the world But to enlarge on this subject would be to forget that the design of this Tract engages me to deal not with the Peripatetic School but the Spagyrical To which I shall therefore return and give you this advertisement about it that what I have hitherto objected is meant against the more common and received Doctrine about the Material Principles of bodies reputed mixt as 't is wont by vulgar Chymists to be applied to the rendring an account of the Qualities of substances Corporeal and therefore I pretend not that the past objections should conclude against other Chymical Theories than that which I was concerned to question And if adept Philosophers supposing there be such or any other more than ordinarily Intelligent Spagyrists shall propose any particular Hypotheses differing from those that I have questioned as their Doctrine and Reasons are not yet known to me so I pretend not that the past Arguments should conclude against them and am willing to think that Persons advantaged with such peculiar opportunities to dive into the Mysteries of Nature will be able to give us if they shall please a far better account of the Qualities of bodies than what is wont to be proposed by the generality of Chymists Thus dear Pyrophilus I have laid before you some of the chief Imperfections I have observed in the vulgar Chymists Doctrine of Qualities and consequently I have given you some of the chief Reasons that hinder me from acquiescing in it And as my objections are not taken from the Scholastical subtleties nor the doubtful speculations of the Peripateticks or other Adversaries of the Hermetick Philosophy but from the nature of things and from Chymical experiments themselves so I hope if any of your Spagyrical friends have a minde to convince me he will attempt to doe it by the most proper way which is by actually giving us clear and particular explications at least of the grand Phaenomena of Qualities which if he shall do he will find me very ready to acquiesce in a Truth that comes usher'd in and endear'd by so acceptable and useful a thing as a Philosophical Theory of Qualities FINIS REFLECTIONS UPON THE Hypothesis OF ALCALI and ACIDUM By the Honourable ROBERT BOYLE Esq Fellow of the R. Society LONDON Printed by E. Flesher for R. Davis Bookseller in Oxford 1675. THough the following Discourse was at first written by way of Appendix to the Treatise of the Imperfection of the Chymical Doctrine of Qualities yet the bulk of it swelling beyond what was foreseen made it seem expedient to publish it as a Tract by it self REFLECTIONS UPON THE Hypothesis OF Alcali and Acidum CHAP. I. I Presume it will not be difficult to discern that much of what has been said about the Imperfection of the vulgar Chymical Doctrine concerning Qualities may with easie variations be applied to some other Hypotheses that are of kin to that Doctrine and particularly to their Theory that would derive both the Qualities of Bodies and the rest of the Phaenomena of Nature from what they call Acidum and Alcali For though these two differences may be met with in a great number and variety of bodies and consequently the Consideratin of them may frequently enough be of good use especially to Spagyrists and Physitians when they are conversant about the secondary and if I may so call them Chymical Causes and Operations of divers mixt bodies yet I confess I cannot acquiesce in this Hypothesis of Alkeli and Acidum in the latitude wherein I find it urged and applied by the Admirers of it as if it could be usefully substituted in the place of Matter and Motion The Hypothesis being in a sort subordinate to that of the tria prima in ascribing to two contrary saline Principles what vulgar Chymists do to their Salt Sulphur and
Doctrine of Alcali and Acidum do not in my apprehension perform what may be justly expected from Philosophical Explications 'T is said indeed that the Acidum working on the Alcali or this upon that produces the effect proposed but that is only to tell us what is the Agent that operates and not the Manner of the operation or the means and process whereby it produces the effect proposed and 't is this modus that Inquisitive Naturalists chiefly desire to learn And if it be said that it is by the mutual hostility of the Principles that the effect is produced it may be answered that besides that that hostility it self is not as we have just now observed a thing clear if so much as Intelligible this is so general and indeterminate a way of explicating things as can afford little or no satisfaction to a searching and cautious Naturalist that considers how very numerous and very various the Phaenomena of Qualities are CHAP. VII TO clear up and to countenance what I have been now saying I shall only take notice of some few obvious Phaenomena of one of the most familiar Operations wherein Acidum and Alcali are supposed to be the grand Agents 'T is known to the very Boys of Chymists that Aqua Regis will dissolve Gold Copper and Mercury and that with these metals especially with the second it will produce an intense degree of heat If now the Cause of this Heat be demanded it may be expected that the Patrons of the Duellists will answer that 't is from the action of the Acid salts of the Menstruum upon the Alcali they meet with in the Metalls But not to mention how many things are here presumed not proved nor that I know some Acid Menstruums and some much more evidently Alcalizate Bodys than these Metals are which yet do not upon their mixtures produce any sensible heat not I say to mention these it is easie to discern that this answer names indeed two supposed efficients of Heat but does not explicate or declare how these Agents produce that Quality which depends upon a certain vehement and various agitation of the singly insensible parts of Bodys whether the Duellists or any other though very differing Causes put them into a motion so modified And therefore Gold and Copper by bare Concussion may be brought to an intense degree of heat without the accession of any acid parts to work upon them But then further when we are told that Aqua Regis by its Acidity working on the Metalline Alcali makes a dissolution of the Metal I am told indeed what they think to be the Agent in this change but not at all satisfied how this Agent effects it for Copper being a very hard metal and Gold generally esteemed by Chymists the closest and compactest Body in nature I would gladly know by what power and way such weak and probably either brittle or flexible bodys as acid Salts are enabled with that force to disjoin such solid and closely coherent Corpuscles as make up the visible masses of Copper and Gold nay and scatter them with that violence as perhaps to toss up multitudes of them into the air And since in the dissolution of these Metals there is another Phaenomenon to be accounted for as well as the forcing of the parts asunder namely the sustentation of the Metal in the Menstruum the Chymists would have much informed me if they had well explained how their Acidum and Alcali is able to sustain and give fluidity to the Corpuscles of the dissolved Metal which though it be but Copper is nine times as heavy as a bulk of water equal to it and if it be Gold is nineteen times heavier than the Liquor that must keep it from sinking and at least divers times heavier in specie than the Salts that are mingled with the aqueous parts can make the Menstruum composed of them both Whereas Trial has assured me that if a piece of Wax or any other such matter be made by less than the hundredth part heavier than an equal bulk of Water it will when thoroughly immersed fall to the bottom and rest there I might also ask a further Question about these Dissolutions as why whereas Aqua Regis dissolves Mercury without being much changed in colour by it Gold retains its own Citrinity or yellowness in the solvent and the solution of Copper is of a colour which being greenish-blew is quite differing from that of the metal that affords it as well as from that of the solvent And I might recruit these with other Queries not impertinent but that these may suffice for a sample on this Occasion and allow me to conclude this Chapter by representing One thing which I would gladly recommend and inculcate to you namely that Those Hypotheses do not a little hinder the progress of Humane knowledge that introduce Morals and Politicks into the Explications of Corporeal Nature where all things are indeed transacted according to Laws Mechanical CHAP. VIII I Might easily have been more copious in the Instances annext to the foregoing Animadversions but that being desirous to be short as well as clear I purposely declined to make use of divers others that seemed proper to be employed and indeed might safely enough have been so because those I have mentioned and especially those which make a great part of them that are Mechanical are not liable to the same exceptions that I foresaw might be made to elude the force of the Examples I passed by And though I think I could very well make those foreseen Objections appear groundless or unsatisfactory yet that could scarce be done without engaging in Controversies that would prove more tedious than I judged them necessary And yet although what I have said in this Excursion be but a part of what I could say I would not be thought to have forgot what I intimated at the beginning of it For though the Reasons I alledged keep me from acquiescing in the Doctrine of Alcali and Acidum as 't is proposed under the notion of a Philosophical Hypothesis such as the Cartesian or Epicurean which are each of them alledged by their embracers to be Mechanical and of a very Catholick extent yet I deny not that the Consideration of the Duellists or the two jarring Principles of Alcali and Acidum may be of good use to Spagyrists and Physitians as I elsewhere further declare Nor do I pretend by the past discourse that questions one Doctrine of the Chymists to beget a general contempt of their Notions and much less of their Experiments For the operations of Chymistry may be misapplied by the erroneous Reasonings of the Artists without ceasing to be themselves things of great use as being applicable as well to the Discovery or Confirmation of solid Theories as the production of new Phaenomena and beneficial effects And though I think that many Notions of Paracelsus and Helmont and some other Eminent Spagyrists are unsolid and not worthy the veneration that
strange things that are affirm'd of the Operations of the Alkahest we may in favour of our Doctrine urge them with what is deliver'd by Helmont where he asserts that all solid Bodies as Stones Minerals and Metals themselves by having this Liquor duly abstracted or distill'd off from them may be changed into Salt equiponderant to the respective bodies whereon the Menstruum was put So that supposing the Alkahest to be totally abstracted as it seems very probable to be since the weight of the body whence 't was drawn off is not alter'd what other change than of Texture can be reasonably imagin'd to have been made in the transmuted bodies and yet divers of them as Flints Rubies Saphyrs Gold Silver c. that were insoluble before some of them in any known Menstruums and others in any but Corrosive Liquors come to be capable of being dissolv'd in common water EXPER. VIII 'T Is a remarkable Phaenomenon that suits very well with our opinion about the interest of Mechanical Principles in the Corrosive Power of Menstruums and the Corrosibility of bodies that we produc'd by the following Experiment This we purposely made to shew after how differing manners the same body may be dissolv'd by two Menstruums whose minute parts are very differingly constituted and agitated For whereas 't is known that if we put large grains of Sea-salt into common water they will be dissolved therein calmly and silently without any appearance of conflict If we put such grains of Salt into good Oyl of Vitriol that Liquor will fall furiously upon them and produce for a good while a hissing noise with fumes and a great store of bubbles as if a potent Menstruum were corroding some stubborn metal or mineral And this Experiment I the rather mention because it may be of use to us on divers other occasions For else 't is not the onely though it be the remarkablest that I made to the same purpose EXPER. IX FOr whereas Aqua Fortis or Aqua Regis being pour'd upon Filings of Copper will work upon them with much noise and ebullition I have tried that good Spirit of Sal Armoniac or Urine being put upon the like Filings and left there without stopping the Glass will quickly begin to work on them and quietly dissolve them almost as water dissolves Sugar To which may be added that even with Oyl of Turpentine I have though but slowly dissolved crude Copper and the Experiment seemed to favour our Conjecture the more because having tried it several times it appear'd that common unrectified Oyl would perform the Solution much quicker than that which was purified and subtiliz'd by rectification which though more subtle and penetrant yet was it seems on that account less fit to dissolve the Metal than the grosser Oyl whose particles might be more solid or more advantageously shap'd or on some other Mechanical account better qualified for the purpose EXPER. X. TAke good Silver and having dissolv'd it in Aqua Fortis precipitate it with a sufficient quantity of good Spirit of Salt then having wash'd the Calx which will be very white with common water and dried it well melt it with a moderate fire into a fusible Mass which will be very much of the nature of what Chymists call Cornu Lunae and which they make by precipitating dissolv'd Silver with a bare Solution of common Salt made in common water And whereas both Spirit of Salt and Silver dissolv'd in Aqua Fortis will each of them apart readily dissolve in simple water our Luna Cornea not onely will not do so but is so indispos'd to Dissolution that I remember I have kept it in Digestion some in Aqua fortis and some in Aqua Regia and that for a good while and in no very faint degree of heat without being able to dissolve it like a Metal the Menstruums having indeed ting'd themselves upon it but left the Composition undissolv'd at the bottom With this Instance of which sort more might be afforded by Chymical Precipitations I shall conclude what I design'd to offer at present about the Corrosibility of Bodies as it may be consider'd in a more general way For as to the Disposition that Particular Bodies have of being dissolved in or of reâ—isting Determinate Liquors it were much easier for me to enlarge upon that Subject than it was to provide the Instances above recited And these are not so few but that 't is hop'd they may suffice to make it probable that in the Relation betwixt a Solvent and the Body it is to work upon that which depends upon the Mechanical affections of one or both is much to be consider'd and has a great interest in the operations of one of the bodies upon the other FINIS OF THE MECHANICAL CAUSES OF CHYMICAL PRECIPITATION By the Honourable ROBERT BOYLE Esq Fellow of the R. Society LONDON Printed by E. Flesher for R. Davis Bookseller in Oxford 1675. Advertisement THough I shall not deny that in Grammatical strictness Precipitation should be reckoned among Chymical Operations not Qualities yet I did not much scruple to insert the following Discourse among the Notes about Particular Qualities because many if not most of the Phaenomena mentioned in the ensuing Essay may be considered as depending some of them upon a power that certain bodies have to cause Precipitation and some upon such a Disposition to be struck down by others as may if men please be called Precipitability And so these differing Affections may with at least tolerable Congruity be referred to those that we have elsewhere stiled Chymical Qualities But though I hope I may in these few Lines have said enough concerning the name given to these Attributes yet perhaps it will be found in time that the things themselves may deserve a larger Discourse than my little leasure would allow them For that is not a causeless Intimation of the Importance of the subject wherewith I conclude the following Tract since besides that many more Instances might have been particularly referred to the Heads treated of in the Insuing Essay there are improper kinds of Precipitation besides those mentioned in the former part of the Discourse to which one may not incongruously refer divers of the Phaenomena of Nature as well in the greater as in the lesser world whereof either no Causes at all or but improper ones are wont to be given And besides the simple Spirits and Salts usually employed by Chymists there are many compounded and decompounded bodies not only factitious but natural and some such as one would scarce suspect that may in congruous subjects produce such Precipitations as I speak of And the Phaenomena and Consequents of such operations may in divers cases prove conducive both to the Discovery of Physical Causes and the Production of useful effects though the particularizing of such Phaenomena do rather belong to a History of Precipitations than to such a Discourse as that which follows wherein I proposed not so much to deliver the latent Mysteries
to give an Intelligent and Historical Account of the Possible Mechanical Origination not of the various Phaenomena of the particular Qualities succinctly mentioned in these Notes though my secondary end being to become a Benefactor to the History of Qualities by providing Materials for my self or better Architects I have not scrupled to adde to those that tend more directly to discover the Nature or Essence of the Quality treated of and to derive it from Mechanical Principles some others which happen'd to come in my way that acquaint us but with some of the less luciferous Phaenomena II. That you may not mistake what is driven at in many of the Experiments and Reasonings deliver'd or propos'd in the ensuing Notes about Particular Qualities I must desire you to take notice with me what it is that I pretend to offer you some proofs of For if I took upon me to demonstrate that the Qualities of bodies cannot proceed from what the Schools call Substantial Forms or from any other Causes but Mechanical it might be reasonably enough expected that my Argument should directly exclude them all But since in my Explications of Qualities I pretend only that they may be explicated by Mechanical Principles without enquiring whether they are explicable by any other that which I need to prove is not that Mechanical Principles are the necessary and onely things whereby Qualities may be explain'd but that probably they will be found sufficient for their explication And since these are confessedly more manifest and more intelligible than substantial Forms and other Scholastic Entities if I may so call them 't is obvious what the consequence will be of our not being oblig'd to have recourse to things whose existence is very disputable and their nature very obscure There are several ways that may be employed some on one occasion and some on another either more directly to reduce Qualities as well as divers other things in nature to Mechanical Principles or by shewing the insufficiency of the Peripatetic and Chymical Theories of Qualities to recommend the Corpuscularian Doctrine of them For further Illustration of this Point I shall adde on this occasion that there are three distinct sorts of Experiments besides other proofs that may be reasonably employ'd though they be not equally efficacious when we treat of the Origine of Qualities For some Instances may be brought to shew that the propos'd Quality may be Mechanically introduc'd into a portion of matter where it was not before Other Instances there may be to shew that by the same means the Quality may be notably varied as to degrees or other not essential Attributes And by some Instances also it may appear that the Quality is Mechanically expell'd from or abolish'd in a portion of matter that was endow'd with it before Sometimes also by the same Operation the former quality is destroyed and a new one is produc'd And each of these kinds of Instances may be usefully employ'd in our Notes about Particular Qualities For as to the first of them there will be scarce any difficulty And as to the second since the permanent Degrees as well as other Attributes of Qualities are said to flow from and do indeed depend upon the same Principles that the Quality it self does if especially in bodies inanimate a change barely Mechanical does notably and permanently alter the degree or other considerable attribute it will afford though not a clear proof yet a probable presumption that the Principles whereon the Quality it self depends are Mechanical And lastly if by a bare Mechanical change of the internal Disposition and structure of a body a permanent Quality confess'd to flow from its substantial Form or inward Principle be abolish'd and perhaps also immediately succeeded by a new Quality Mechanically producible if I say this come to pass in a body Inanimate especially if it be also as to sense similar such a Phaenomenon will not a little favour that Hypothesis which teaches that these Qualities depend upon certain contextures and other Mechanical Affections of the small parts of the bodies that are indowed with them and consequently may be abolish'd when that necessary Modification is destroyed This is thus briefly premis'd to shew the pertinency of alledging differing kinds of Experiments and Phaenomena in favour of the Corpuscular Hypothesis about Qualities What has been thus laid down may I hope facilitate and shorten most of the remaining work of this Preamble which is to shew though but very briefly that there may be several ways not impertinently employable to recommend the Corpuscularian Doctrine of Qualities For first it may sometimes be shewn that a Substantial Form cannot be pretended to be the necessary Principle of this or that Quality as will for instance hereafter be made manifest in the Asperity and Smoothness of bodies and in the Magnetical Vertue residing in a piece of Iron that has been impregnated by a Loadstone 'T is true that the force of such Instances is indirect and that they do not expresly prove the Hypothesis in whose favour they are alledged but yet they may do it good service by disproving the Grounds and Conclusions of the Adversaries and so by removing Prejudices making way for the better entertainment of the truth Secondly we may sometimes obtain the same or the like Quality by Artificial and sometimes even temporary Compositions which being but factitious bodies are by Learned Adversaries confess'd not to have Substantial Forms and can indeed reasonably be presum'd to have but resulting Temperaments As will be hereafter exemplifi'd in the production of Green by compounding Blew and Yellow and in the Electrical Faculty of Glass and in the temporary whiteness produc'd by beating clear Oyl and fair Water into an Ointment and by beating water into a froth and more permanently in making Coral white by flawing it with heat and in divers other Particulars that will more properly be elsewhere mention'd Thirdly then in some cases the Quality propos'd may be either introduced or vary'd or distroy'd in an inanimate body when no change appears to be made in the body except what is Mechanical and what might be produc'd in it supposing such a parcel of matter were artificially fram'd and constituted as the body is though without any Substantial Form or other such like internal Principle So when a piece of Glass or of clarify'd Rosin is by being beaten to powder deprived of its Transparency and made white there appears no change to be made in the pulveriz'd body but a comminution of it into a multitude of Corpuscles that by their number and the various scituations of their surfaces are fitted copiously to reflect the sincere Light several ways or give some peculiar Modification to its Rayes and hinder that free passage of the beams of Light that is requisite to Transparency Fourthly as in the cases belonging to the foregoing number there appears not to intervene in the Patient or Subject of the change any thing but a Mechanical alteration of
matter boil over and though there were a great commotion excited by the action and reaction of the Ingredients which was attended with a copious froth and a hissing noise yet 't was a pretty while e're the Glass was sensibly warm on the outside but by that time the salt was all dissolv'd the Liquor in the Thermoscope appear'd to be impell'd up about three inches and an half And yet if my memory do not much deceive me I have found that by mixing Salt of Tartar with another Salt the Texture of the fixt Alkali was so alter'd that upon the affusion of spirit of Verdigrease made without spirit of Vinegar and spirit of Wine though there ensued a great conflict with noise and bubbles yet instead of an Incalescence a considerable degree of Coldness was produced EXPER. X. 'T Is very probable that further Trials will furnish us with more Instances to shew how the Production of Cold may in some cases be effected varied or hinder'd by Mechanical Circumstances that are easily and usually overlook'd I remember on this occasion that though in the Experiment above recited we observ'd that Oyl of Vitriol and water being first shaken together the volatil salt of Sal Armoniac being afterwards put to them produced a sensible Coldness yet I found that if a little Oyl of Vitriol and of the volatile Salt were first put together though soon after a considerable proportion of water were added there would be produc'd not a Coldness but a manifest degree of Heat which would impell up the liquor in the Thermoscope to the height of some inches And I remember too that though Salt of Tartar will as we shall see e're long grow hot in the water yet having distill'd some Salt of Tartar and Cinaber in a strong fire and put the whole Caput mortuum into distill'd or Rain-water it made indeed a hissing there as if it had been Quick-lime but produced no Heat that I could by feeling perceive I shall adde that not onely as we have seen already some unheeded Circumstances may promote or hinder the artificial Production of Cold by particular Agents but which will seem more strange some unobserv'd and perhaps hardly observable Indisposition in the Patient may promote or hinder the effects of the grand and Catholick Efficients of Cold whatever those be This suspicion I represent as a thing that further experience may possibly countenance because I have sometimes found that the degree of the Operation of Cold has been much varied by latent Circumstances some bodies being more wrought upon and others less than was upon very probable grounds expected And particularly I remember that though Oyl of Vitriol be one of the firiest liquors that is yet known and does perform some of the Operations of fire it self as we shall elsewhere have occasion to shew and will thaw Ice sooner than Spirit of Wine or any other liquor as I have tried yet having put about a pound or more by our estimate of choice rectified Oyl of Vitriol into a strong Glass-Vial proportionable to it we found that except a little that was fluid at the top it was all congeal'd or coagulated into a mass like Ice though the Glass stood in a Laboratory where a fire was constantly kept not far from it and where Oyl of Vitriol very seldom or never has before or since been observ'd to congeal or coagulate so much as in part And the odness of our Phaenomenon was increas'd by this Circumstance that the Mass continued solid a good while after the weather was grown too mild to have such Operations upon Liquors far less indispos'd to lose their fluidity by Cold than even common Oyl of Vitriol is On the other side I remember that about two years ago I expos'd some Oyl of sweet Almonds hermetically seal'd up in a Glass-bubble to observe what Condensation an intense cold could make of it for though Cold expands water it condenses common oyl but the next day I found to my wonder that not onely the oyl remain'd unfrozen by the sharp frost it had been expos'd to but that it had not its transparency troubled though 't is known that oyl will be brought to concrete and turn opacous by a far less degree of Cold than is requisite to freeze water notwithstanding which this liquor which was lodged in a glass so thin that 't was blown at the flame of a Lamp continued fluid and diaphanous in very frosty weather so long till I lost the expectation of seeing it congeal'd or concreted And this brings into my mind that though Camphire be as I formerly noted reckon'd by many potentially cold yet we kept some oyl of it of our making wherein the whole body of the Camphire remain'd being onely by some Nitrous Spirits reduc'd to the form of an Oyl we kept it I say in such intense degrees of Cold that would have easily frozen water without finding it to lose its Transparency or its Fluidity And here I shall put an end to the first Section containing our Notes about Cold the design of which may be not a little promoted by comparing with them the beginning of the ensuing Section For if it be true that as we there shew the nature of Heat consists either onely or chiefly in the local motion of the small parts of a body Mechanically modified by certain conditions of which the principal is the vehemency of the various agitations of those insensible parts and if it be also true as Experience witnesses it to be that when the minute parts of a body are in or arrive at such a state that they are more slowly or faintly agitated than those of our fingers or other organs of feeling we judge them cold These two things laid together seem plainly enough to argue that a Privation or Negation of that Local Motion that is requisite to constitute Heat may suffice for the denominating a body Cold as Coldness is a quality of the Object which as 't is perceiv'd by the mind is also an affection of the Sentient And therefore an Imminution of such a degree of former motion as is necessary to make a body Hot as to sense and which is sufficient to the Production of sensible Coldness may be Mechanically made since Slowness as well as Swiftness being a Mode of Local motion is a Mechanical thing And though its effect which is Coldness seem a Privation or Negation yet the Cause of it may be a positive Agent acting Mechanically by clogging the Agile Calorific Particles or deadning their motion or perverting their determination or by some other intelligible way bringing them to a state of Coldness as to sense I say Coldness as to sense because as 't is a Tactile Quality in the popular acception of it 't is relative to our Organs of Feeling as we see that the same luke-warm water will appear hot and cold to the same mans hands if when both are plung'd into it one of them shall have been newly held
very quick and copious diffusion of the parts of one body through those of another whereby both are confusedly tumbled and put into a calorific motion or from this that the parts of the dissolved body come to be every way in great numbers violently scatter'd or from the fierce and confused shocks or justlings of the Corpuscles of the conflicting bodies or masses which may be suppos'd to have the motions of their parts differingly modified according to their respective Natures Or from this that by the plentiful ingress of the Corpuscles of the one into the almost commensurate parts of the other the motion of some etherial matter that was wont before swiftly to permeate the distinct bodies comes to be check'd and disturbed and forced to either brandish or whirl about the parts in a confus'd manner till it have settled it self a free passage through the new mixture almost as the Light does thorow divers troubled liquors and vitrified bodies which at length it makes transparent But without here engaging in a solemn examination of the Hypothesis of Alcali and Acidum and without determining whether any one or more of the newly mention'd Mechanical Causes or whether some other that I have not yet named is to be entitled to the effect it will not be impertinent to propose divers Instances of the Production of Heat by the Operation of one Agent Oyl of Vitriol that it may be consider'd whether it be likely that this single Agent should upon the score of Antipathy or that of its being an Acid Menstruum be able to produce an intense Heat in many bodies of so differing natures as are some of those that we shall have occasion to name And now I proceed to the Experiments themselves Take some ounces of strong Oyl of Vitriol and shaking it with three or four times its weight of common water though both the liquors were cold when they were put together yet their mixture will in a trice grow intensely hot and continue considerably so for a good while In this case it cannot probably be pretended by the Chymists that the Heat arises from the conflict of the Acid and Alcalizate Salts abounding in the two liquors since the common water is suppos'd an elementary body devoid of all salts and at least being an insipid liquor 't will scarce be thought to have Alcali enough to produce by its Reaction so intense a Heat That the Heat emergent upon such a mixture may be very great when the Quantities of the mingled liquors are considerably so may be easily concluded from one of my Memorials wherein I find that no more than two ounces of Oyl of Vitriol being poured but not all at once into four ounces onely of distilled Rain-water made and kept it manifestly warm for a pretty deal above an hour and during no small part of that time kept it so hot that 't was troublesome to be handled EXPER. XIV THe former Experiment brings into my mind one that I mention without teaching it in the History of Cold and it appear'd very surprizing to those that knew not the ground of it For having sometimes merrily propos'd to heat cold liquors with Ice the undertaking seem'd extravagant if not impossible but was easily perform'd by taking out of a bason of cold water wherein divers fragments of Ice were swimming one or two pieces that I perceived were well drenched with the liquor and immersing them suddenly into a wide-mouth'd Glass wherein strong Oyl of Vitriol had been put for this Menstruum presently mingling with the water that adher'd to the ice produc'd in it a brisk heat and that sometimes with a manifest smoke which nimbly dissolved the contiguous parts of Ice and those the next and so the whole Ice being speedily reduced to water and the corrosive Menstruum being by two or three shakes well dispersed through it and mingled with it the whole mixture would grow in a trice so hot that sometimes the Vial that contain'd it was not to be endured in ones hand EXPER. XV. NOtwithstanding the vast difference betwixt common water and high rectified Spirit of Wine whereof men generally take the former for the most contrary body to fire and whereof the Chymists take the later to be but a kind of liquid Sulphur since it may presently be all reduc'd into flame yet as I expected I found upon trial that Oyl of Vitriol being mingled with pure Spirit of Wine would as well grow hot as with common water Nor does this Experiment always require great quantities of the liquors For when I took but one ounce of strong Oyl of Vitriol though I put to it less than half an ounce of choice Spirit of Wine yet those two being lightly shaken together did in a trice conceive so brisk a Heat that they almost fill'd the vial with fumes and made it so hot thar I had unawares like to have burnt my hand with it before I could lay it aside I made the like Trial with the same Corrosive Menstruum and common Aqua vitae bought at a Strong-water-shop by the mixture of which Liquors Heat was produc'd in the Vial that I could not well endure The like success I had in an Experiment wherein Oyl of Vitriol was mixt with common Brandy save that in this the Heat produced seem'd not so intense as in the former Trial which it self afforded not so fierce a Heat as that which was made with rectified Spirit of Wine EXPER. XVI THose Chymists who conceive that all the Incalescencies of bodies upon their being mixt proceed from their antipathy or hostility will not perhaps expect that the parts of the same body either numerically or in specie as the Schools phrase it should and that without manifest conflict grow very hot together And yet having for trials sake put two ounces of Colcothar so strongly calcin'd that it was burnt almost to blackness into a Retort we poured upon it two ounces of strong Oyl of English Vitriol and found that after about a minute of an hour they began to grow so hot that I could not endure to hold my hand to the bottom of the Vessel to which the mixture gave a heat that continued sensible on the outside for between twenty and thirty minutes EXPER. XVII THough I have not observ'd any Liquor to equal Oyl of Vitriol in the number of Liquors with which it will grow hot yet I have not met with any Liquor wherewith it came to a greater Incalescence than it frequently enough did with common Oyl of Turpentine For when we caused divers ounces of each to be well shaken together in a strong vessel fasten'd to prevent mischief to the end of a pole or staff the Ebullition was great and fierce enough to be not undeservedly admired by the Spectators And this brings into my mind a pleasant adventure afforded by these Liquors of each of which having for the Production of Heat and other purposes caus'd a good bottle full to be put up with
granted not to be found in them Thus elementary Water though never so pure as distilled Rain-water has fluidity and coldness and humidity and transparency and volatility without having any of the tria prima And the purest Earth as Ashes carefully freed from the fixt salt has gravity and consistence and dryness and colour and fixity without owing them either to Salt Sulphur or Mercury not to mention that there are Celestial bodies which do not appear nor are wont to be pretended to consist of the tria prima that yet are indowed with Qualities As the Sun has Light and as many Philosophers think Heat and Colour and the Moon has a determinate consistence and figuration as appears by her mountains and Astronomers observe that the higher Planets and even the Fixt stars appear to be differingly coloured But I shall not multiply Instances of this kind because what I have said may not onely serve for my present purpose but bring a great Confirmation to what I lately said when I noted that the Chymical Principles were in many cases not necessary to explicate Qualities For since in Earth Water c. such diffused Qualities as gravity fixtness colour transparency and fluidity must be acknowledged not to be derived from the tria prima 't is plain that portions of matter may be endowed with such Qualities by other causes and agents than Salt Sulphur and Mercury And then why should we deny that also in compounded bodies those Qualities may be sometimes at least produced by the same or the like Causes As we see that the reduction of a diaphanous Solid to pouder produces whiteness whether the comminution happens to Rock-crystal or to Venice glass or to Ice The first of which is acknowledged to be a natural and perfectly mixt body the second a factitious and not onely mixt but decompounded body and the last for ought appears an elementary body or at most very slightly and imperfectly mixt And so by mingling Air in small portions with a diaphanous Liquor as we do when we beat such a Liquor into foam a whiteness is produced as well in pure Water which is acknowledged to be a simple body as in white Wine which is reckoned among perfectly mixt bodies CHAP. IV. I Further observe that the Chymists Explications do not reach deep and far enough For first most of them are not sufficiently distinct and full so as to come home to the particular Phaenomena nor often times so much as to all the grand ones that belong to the History of the Qualities they pretend to explicate You will readily believe that a Chymist will not easily make out by his Salt Sulphur and Mercury why a Loadstone capp'd with steel may be made to take up a great deal more Iron sometimes more than eight or ten times as much than if it be immediatly applied to the iron or why if one end of the Magnetic Needle is dispos'd to be attracted by the North-pole for instance of the Load-stone the other Pole of the Load-stone will not attract it but drive it away or why a bar or rod of iron being heated red-hot and cooled perpendicularly will with its lower end drive away the flower de Luce or the North-end of a Marriners Needle which the upper end of the same barr or rod will not repell but draw to it In short of above threescore Properties or notable Phaenomena of Magnetic Bodies that some Writers have reckon'd up I do not remember that any three have been by Chymists so much as attempted to be solved by their three Principles And even in those Qualities in whose explications these Principles may more probably than elsewhere pretend to have a place the Spagyrists accounts are wont to fall so short of being distinct and particular enough that they use to leave divers considerable Phaenomena untouch'd and do but very lamely or slightly explicate the more obvious or familiar And I have so good an opinion of divers of the embracers of the Spagyrical Theory of Qualities among whom I have met with very Learned and worthy men that I think that if a Quality being pos'd to them they were at the same time presented with a good Catalogue of the Phaenomena that they may take in the History of it as it were with one view they would plainly perceive that there are more particulars to be accounted for than at first they were aware of and divers of them such as may quite discourage considering men from taking upon them to explain them all by the Tria prima and oblige them to have recourse to more Catholic and comprehensive Principles I know not whether I may not add on this occasion that methinks a Chymist who by the help of his Tria Prima takes upon him to interpret that Book of Nature of which the Qualities of bodies make a great part acts at but a little better rate than he that seeing a great book written in a Cypher whereof he were acquainted but with three Letters should undertake to decypher the whole piece For though 't is like he would in many words find one of the Letters of his short key and in divers words two of them and perhaps in some all three yet besides that in most of the words wherein the known Letter or Letters may be met with they may be so blended with other unknown Letters as to keep him from decyphering a good part of those very words 't is more than probable that a great part of the book would consist of words wherein none of his three Letters were to be found CHAP. V. AND this is the first account on which I observe that the Chymical Theory of Qualities does not reach far enough But there is another branch of its deficiency For even when the explications seem to come home to the Phaenomena they are not primary and if I may so speak Fontal enough To make this appear I shall at present imploy but these two Considerations The first is that those substances themselves that Chymists call their Principles are each of them indowed with several Qualities Thus Salt is a consistent not a fluid body it has its weight 't is dissoluble in water is either diaphanous or opacous fixt or volatile sapid or insipid I speak thus disjunctively because Chymists are not all agreed about these things and it concerns not my Argument which of the disputable Qualities be resolved upon And Sulphur according to them is a body fusible inflammable c. and according to Experience is consistent heavy c. So that 't is by the help of more primary and general Principles that we must explicate some of those Qualities which being found in bodies supposed to be perfectly similar or homogeneous cannot be pretended to be derived in one of them from the other And to say that 't is the nature of a Principle to have this or that Quality as for instance of Sulphur to be susible and therefore we are not to exact a
Reason why it is so though I could say much by way of answer I shall now only observe that this Argument is grounded but upon a supposition and will be of no force if from the primary affections of bodies one may deduce any good Mechanical Explication of Fusibility in the general without necessarily supposing such a Primigeneal Sulphur as the Chymists fancy or deriving it from thence in other bodies And indeed since not only Salt-peter Sea salt Vitriol and Allum but Salt of Tartar and the Volatile Salt of Urine are all of them fusible I do not well see how Chymists can derive the fusibleness even of Salts obtained by their own analysis such as Salt of Tartar and of Urine from the participation of the Sulphureous Ingredient especially since if such an attempt should be made it would overthrow the Hypothesis of three Simple bodies whereof they will have all mixt ones to be compounded and still 't would remain to be explicated upon what account the Principle that is said to endow the other with such a Quality comes to be endowed therewith it self For 't is plain that a mass of Sulphur is not an Atomical or Adamantine body but consists of a multitude of Corpuscles of determinate Figures and connected after a determinate manner so that it may be reasonably demanded why such a Convention of particles rather than many another that does not constitutes a fusible body CHAP. VI. AND this leads me to a further Consideration which makes me look upon the Chymists explications as not deep and radical enough and it is this that when they tell us for instance that the fusibleness of bodies proceeds from Sulphur in case they say true they do but tell us what material Ingredient 't is that being mingled with and dispers'd through the other parts of a body makes it apt to melt But this does not intelligibly declare what it is that makes a portion of matter fusible and how the sulphureous Ingredient introduces that disposition into the rest of the mass wherewith 't is commixt or united And yet 't is such explications as these that an inquisitive Naturalist chiefly looks after and which I therefore call Philosophical And to shew that there may be more Fontal explications I shall only observe that not to wander from our present instance Sulphur it self is fusible And therefore as I lately intimated Fusibility which is not the Quality of one Atome or Particle but of an Aggregate of Particles ought it self to be accounted for in that Principle before the Fusibleness of all other bodies be derived from it And 't will in the following notes appear that in Sulphur it self that Quality may be probably deduced from the convention of Corpuscles of determinate shapes and sizes contexed or connected after a convenient manner And if either nature or art or chance should bring together particles endowed with the like Mechanical Affections and associate them after the like manner the resulting body would be fusible though the component particles had never been parts of the Chymists primordial sulphur And such particles so convening might perhaps have made Sulphur it self though before there had been no such body in the world And what I say to those Chymists that make the sulphureous Ingredient the cause of fusibility may easily mutatis mutandis be applied to their Hypothesis that rather ascribe that quality to the Mercurial or the Saline Principle and consequently cannot give a rational account of the fusibility of Sulphur And therefore though I readily allow as I shall have afterwards occasion to declare that Sulphur or an other of the tria prima may be met with and even abound in several bodies endowed with the quality that is attributed to their participation of that Principle yet that this may be no certain sign that the propos'd Quality must flow from that Ingredient you may perhaps be assisted to discern by this illustration That if Tin be duly mixt with Copper or Gold or as I have tried with Silver or Iron it will make them very brittle and it is also an Ingredient of divers other bodies that are likewise brittle as blew green white and otherwise colour'd Amels which are usually made of calcin'd Tin which the Tradesmen call Puttee colliquated with the Ingredients of Crystal-glass and some small portion of Mineral pigment But though in all the above-named brittle bodies Tin be a considerable Ingredient yet 't were very unadvised to affirm that Brittleness in general proceeds from Tin For provided the solid parts of consistent bodies touch one another but according to small portions of their surfaces and be not implicated by their contexture the Metalline or other Composition may be brittle though there be no Tin at all in it And in effect the materials of glass being brought to fusion will compose a brittle body as well when there is no Puttee colliquated with them as when there is Calcin'd Lead by the action of the fire may be melted into a brittle mass and even into transparent Glass without the help of Tin or any other additament And I need not add that there are a multitude of other bodies that cannot be pretended to owe their brittleness to any participation of Tin of which they have no need if the matter they consist of wants not the requisite Mechanical Dispositions And here I shall venture to add that the way employed by the Chymists as well as the Peripateticks of accounting for things by the Ingredients whether Elements Principles or other bodies that they suppose them to consist of will often frustrate the Naturalists expectation of events which may frequently prove differing from what he promis'd himself upon the Consideration of the Qualities of each Ingredient For the ensuing Notes contain divers Instances wherein there emerges a new Quality differing from or even contrary to any that is conspicuous in the Ingredients as two transparent bodies may make an opacous mixture a yellow body and a blew one that is green two malleable bodies a brittle one two actually cold bodies a hot one two fluid bodies a consistent one c. And as this way of judging by material Principles hinders the foreknowledg of Events from being certain so it much more hinders the assignation of Causes from being satisfactory so that perhaps some would not think it very rash to say that those who judg of all mixt bodies as Apothecaries do of Medicines barely by the Qualities and Proportions of the Ingredients such as among the Aristotelians are the four Elements and among the Chymists the tria prima do as if one should pretend to give an account of the Phaenomena and operations of Clocks and Watches and their Diversities by this That some are made of brass wheels some of iron some have plain ungilt wheels others of wheels overlaid with Gold some furnished with gut-strings others with little chains c. and that therefore the Qualities and Predominancies of these metalls that make parts of
when that adhesion ceases and the leaves sit but loosely on a wind no stronger than that they resisted before will with ease blow them off and perhaps carry them up a good way into the Air. But here note that it was not without some cause that I added above that in a fluid body the parts should at least be united in such a manner as does not much indispose them to be separated For 't is not impossible that the parts of a body may by the figures and smoothness of the surfaces be sufficiently apt to be put into motion and yet be indisposed to admit such a motion as would totally separate them and make them fly up into the Air. As if you take two pieces of very flat and well-polished marble or glass and lay them one upon the other you easily make them slide along each others surfaces but not easily pull up one of them whilest the other continues its station And when Glass is in the state of fusion the parts of it will easily slide along each other as is usual in those of other fluids and consequently change places and yet the continuity of the whole is not intirely broken but every corpuscle does somewhere touch some other corpuscle and thereby maintain the cohesion that indisposes it for that intire separation accompanied with a motion upwards that we call avolation And so when Salt-peter alone is in a Crucible exposed to the fire though a very moderate degree of it will suffice to bring the Salt to a state of fusion and consequently to put the corpuscles that compose it into a restless motion yet a greater degree of heat than is necessary to melt it will not extricate so much as the Spirits and make them fly away CHAP. III. THE foregoing Doctrine of the Volatility of bodies may be as well illustrated as applied if we proceed to deduce from it the generall ways of Volatilization of bodies or of introducing volatility into an assigned portion of matter For these wayes seem not inconveniently reducible to five which I shall severally mention though Nature and Art do usually imploy two or more of them in conjunction For which Reason I would not when I speak of one of these wayes be understood as if excluding the rest I meant that no other concurred with it The first of the five ways or means of Volatilizing a body is to reduce it into minute parts and caeteris paribus the more minute they are the better That the bringing a body into very minute parts may much conduce to the volatilizing of it may be gathered from the vulgar practice of the Chymists who when they would sublime or distill Antimony Sal Armoniac Sea-salt Nitre c. are wont to beat them to powders to facilitate their receiving a further comminution by the action of the fire And here I observe that in some bodies this comminution ought not to be made onely at first but to be continued afterwards For Chymists find by experience though perhaps without considering the reason of it that Sea-salt and Nitre will very hardly afford their Spirits in Distillations without they be mingled with powdered clay or bole or some such other additament which usually twice or thrice exceeds the weight of the Salt it self Although these additaments being themselves fixt seem unlikely to promote the volatilization of the bodies mixt with them yet by hindering the small grains of Salt to melt together into one lump or masse and consequently by keeping them in the state of Comminution they much conduce to the driving up of the Spirits or the finer parts of the Salts by the operation of the fire But to prosecute a little what I was saying of the Conduciveness of bringing a body into small parts to the volatilization of it I shall add that in some cases the Comminution may be much promoted by employing Physical after Mechanical ways and that when the parts are brought to such a pitch of exiguity they may be elevated much better than before Thus if you take filings of Mars and mix them with Sal Armoniack some few parts may be sublimed but if as I have done you dissolve those filings in good Spirit of Salt instead of Oil of Vitriol and having coagulated the solution you calcine the greenish Crystalls or vitriolum Martis that will be afforded you may with ease and in no long time obtain a Crocus Martis of very fine parts so that I remember when we exquisitely mingled this very fixt powder with a convenient proportion of Sal Armoniac and gradually press'd it with a competent fire we were able to elevate at the first Sublimation a considerable part of it and adding a like or somewhat inferiour proportion of fresh Sal Armoniac to the Caput Mortuum we could raise so considerable a part of that also and in it of the Crocus that we thought if we had had Conveniency to pursue the operation we should by not many repeated Sublimations have elevated the whole Crocus which to hint that upon the by afforded a Sublimat of so very astringent a Tast as may make the trial of it in stanching of blood stopping of fluxes and other cases where potent astriction is desired worthy of a Physicians Curiosity CHAP. IV. THE second means to volatilize bodies is to rub grind or otherwise reduce their corpuscles to be either smooth or otherwise fitly shaped to clear themselves or be disintangled from each other By reason of the minuteness of the corpuscles which keeps them from being separately discernible by the Eye 't is not to be expected that immediate and ocular Instances should be given on this occasion but that such a change is to be admitted in the small parts of many bodies brought to be volatile seems highly probable from the account formerly given of the requisites or conditions of Volatility whose introduction into a portion of matter will scarce be explicated without the intervention of such a change To this second Instrument of Volatilization in concurrence with the first may probably be referred the following Phaenomena In the two first of which there is imployed no additional volatile Ingredient and in the fourth a fixt body is disposed to volatility by the operation of a Liquour though this be carefully abstracted from it 1. If Urine freshly made be put to distill the Phlegm will first ascend and the Volatile salt will not rise 'till that be almost totally driven away and then requires a not inconsiderable degree of fire to elevate it But if you putrefie or digest Urine though in a well-closed Glass-Vessel for seven or eight weeks that gentle warmth will make the small parts so rub against or otherwise act upon one another that the finer ones of the Salt will perhaps be made more slender and light and however will be made to extricate themselves so far as to become volatile and ascending in a very gentle heat leave the greatest part of the phlegm behind them 2. So
we must not quite leave out the mention of the Air which I have often observed to facilitate the elevation of some bodies even in close Vessels wherein though to fill them too full be judged by many a Compendious practise because the streams have a less way to ascend yet Experience has several times informed me that at least in some cases they take wrong measures and that to pass by another Cause of their disappointment a large proportion of Air purposely left in the Vessels may more than compensate the greater space that is to be ascended by the vapours or exhalations of the matter that is to be distilled or sublimed And if in close Vessels the presence of the Air may promote the ascension of bodies it may well be expected that the elevation of divers of them may be furthered by being attempted in open Vessels to which the Air has free access And if we may give any credit to the probable Relations of some Chymists the Air does much contribute to the volatilization of some bodies that are barely though indeed for no short time exposed to it But the account on which the Air by its bare presence or peculiar operations conduces to the Volatilization of some bodies is a thing very difficult to be determined without having recourse to some Notions about Gravity and Levity and of the Constitution of the corpuscles that compose the Air which I take to be both very numerous and no less various And therefore I must not in these occasional Notes lanch out into such a Subject though for fear I should be blamed for too much slighting my old acquaintance the Air I durst not quite omit the power it has to dispose some bodies to Volatility A moderate attention may suffice to make it be discerned that in what hath been hitherto delivered I have for the most part considered the small portions of matter to be elevated in Volatilization as intire Corpuscles And therefore it may be now pertinent to intimate in a Line or two that there may be also Cases wherein a kind of Volatilization improperly so called may be effected by making use of such additaments as break off or otherwise divide the particles of the corpuscles to be elevated and by adhering to and so clogging one of the particles to which it proves more congruous inable the other which is now brought to be more light or disingaged to ascend This may be illustrated by what happens when Sal Armoniac is well ground with Lapis Calaminaris or with some fix'd Alkali and then committed to distillation For the Sea-salt that enters the Composition of the Sal Armoniac being detained by the stone or the Alkali there is a divorce made between the common Salt and the urinous and fuliginous Salts that were incorporated with it and being now disingaged from it are easily elevated I elsewhere mention that I have observed in Man's Urine a kind of native Sal Armoniac much less Volatile than the fugitive that is sublim'd from Man's Blood Harts-horn c. and therefore supposing that a separation of parts may be made by an Alkali as well in this Salt as in the common factitious Sal Armoniac I put to fresh Urine a convenient proportion which was a plentifull one of Salt of Pot-ashes that being then at hand and distilling the Liquor it yielded according to expectation a Spirit more Volatile than the Phlegm and of a very piercing tast which way of obtaining a Spirit without any violence of fire and without either previously abstracting the Phlegm as we are fain to do in fresh Urine or tediously waiting for the fermentation of stale Urine I taught some Chymists because of the usefulness of Spirit of Urine which being obtained this innocent way would probably be employed with much less suspicion of corrosiveness than if in the operation I had made use of Quick-lime Another Illustration of what I was not long since saying may be fetch'd from the Experiment of making Spirit of Nitre by mixing Salt-peter with Oil of Vitriol and distilling them together For the Oil does so divide or break the corpuscles of the Nitre that the now-disposed particles of that Salt which amount to a great portion of the whole will be made easily enough to ascend even with a moderate fire of Sand and sometimes without any fire at all in the form of Spirits exceeding unquiet subtle and apt to moak a way To which Instances of this imperfect kind of Volatilization more might be added but that you may well think I have detain'd you but too long already with indigested Notes about one Quality CHAP. VII THe last means of Volatilizing bodies is the operation of the Fire or some other actual Heat But of this which is obvious it would be superfluous to discourse Onely this I shall intimate that there may be bodies which in such degrees of fire as are wont to be given in the vulgar operations of Chymists will not be elevated which yet may be forced up by such violent and lasting fires as are employed by the Melters of Ores and Founders of Guns and sometimes by Glass-makers And on this Consideration I shall here observe to you since I did not doe it at my entrance on these Notes that Chymists are wont to speak and I have accordingly been led to treat of Volatility and Fixity in a popular sense of those Terms For if we would consider the matter more strictly I presume we should find that Volatility and Fixity are but relative Qualities which are to be estimated especially the former of them by the degree of fire to which the body whereto we ascribe one or other of those Qualities is exposed and therefore it is much more difficult than men are aware of to determine accurately when a body ought to be accounted Volatile and when not since there is no determinate degree of Heat agreed on nor indeed easie to be devised that may be as a standard whereby to measure Volatility and Fixtness And 't is obvious that a body that remains fixt in one degree of fire may be forced up by another To which may be added agreeably to what I lately began to observe that a body may pass for absolutely fixt among the generality of Chymists and yet be unable to persevere in the fires of Founders and Glass-makers Which brings into my mind that not having observed that Chymists have examined the Fixity of other bodies than metalline ones by the Cupel I had the Curiosity to put dry Salt of Tartar upon it and found as I expected that in no long time it manifestly wasted in so vehement a heat wherein also the Air came freely at it though Quick-lime handled after the same way lost not of its weight and having well mixed one ounce of good Salt of Tartar with treble its weight of Tobacco-pipe Clay we kept them but for two or at most three hours in a strong fire yet the Crucible being purposely left uncovered we
found the Salt of Tartar so wasted that the remaining mixture which was not flux'd afforded us not near a quarter of an ounce of Salt And indeed I scarce doubt but that in strictness divers of those bodies that pass for absolutely fixt are but semi-fixt or at least but comparatively and relatively fix'd that is in reference to such degrees of fire as they are wont to be exposed to in the Distillations Sublimations c. of Chymists not such as are given in the raging fires of Founders and Glass-makers And perhaps even the fires of Glass-makers and Say-masters themselves are not the most intense that may possibly be made in a short time provided there be but small portions of matter to be wrought on by them And in effect I know very few bodies besides Gold that will perserve totally fixt in the vehementest degrees of fire that Trials have made me acquainted with And I elsewhere tell you that though Tin in our Chymical Reverberatories themselves is wont to be reduced but into a Calx that is reputed very fixt yet in those intense fires that a Virtuoso of my acquaintance uses in his Tin-Mines there is not seldom found quantities of Tin carried up to a notable height in the form of a whitish powder which being in good masses forced off from the places to which it had fastened it self does by a skillful reduction yield many a pound weight of good malleable metal which seemed to me to be rather more than less fine than ordinary Tin Postscript Relating to Page 15. of this Tract and here annext for their sakes who have a mind to repeat the Experiment there delivered that so they may know the quantities employed in it WIth two parts of this Crocus we ground very well three parts of Sal Armoniac and having sublimed them in a strong fire we took off the high coloured Sublimat and put in either an equal weight or a weight exceeding it by half to the Caput Mortuum we found after the second Sublimation which was also high coloured that of an ounce of Crocus we had raised six drams that is three quarters of the whole weight FINIS EXPERIMENTAL NOTES OF The Mechanical Origine OR PRODVCTION OF FIXTNESS LONDON Printed by E. Flesher for R. Davis Bookseller in Oxford 1675. OF The Mechanical Origine OR PRODVCTION OF FIXTNESS CHAP. I. FIXITY being the opposite Quality to Volatility what we have discoursed about the latter will make the nature of the former more easily understood and upon that account allow me to make somewhat the quicker dispatch of what I have to say of it The Qualifications that conduce most to the Fixity of a portion of matter seem to be these First the grossness or the bulk of the corpuscles it consists of For if these be too big they will be too unwieldly and unapt to be carried up into the Air by the action of such minute particles as those of the Fire and will also be unfit to be buoyed up by the weight of the Air as we see that Vapours whilst they are such are small enough to swim in the Air but can no longer be sustained by it when they convene into drops of rain or flakes of snow But here it is to be observed that when I speak of the corpuscles that a fixt body consists of I mean not either its Elementary or its Hypostatical Principles as such but onely those very little masses or clusters of particles of what kind soever they be that stick so firmly to one another as not to be divisible and dissipable by that degree of fire in which the body is said to be fixt so that each of those little Concretions though it may it self be made up of two three or more particles of a simpler nature is considered here per modum Vnius or as one intire corpuscle And this is one Qualification conducive to the Fixtness of a body The next is the ponderousness or solidity of the corpuscles it is made up of For if these be very solid and which solid and compact bodies usually are of a considerable specifick gravity they will be too heavy to be carried up by the effluvia or the action of the fire and their ponderousness will make them as unwieldy and indisposed to be elevated by such Agents as the grossness of their bulk would make bigger corpuscles but of a proportionably inferiour specifick weight On which account the calces of some metals and minerals as Gold Silver c. though by the operation of Solvents or of the fire or of both reduced to powders exceedingly subtile will resist such vehement fires as will easily drive up bigger but less heavy and compact corpuscles than those calces consist of The third Qualification that conduces to the Fixity of a body belongs to its Integral parts not barely as they are several parts of it but as they are aggregated or contexed into one body For the Qualification I mean is the ineptitude of the component corpuscles for avolation by reason of their branchedness irregular figures crookedness or other inconvenient shape which intangles the particles among one another and makes them difficult to be extricated by which means if one of them do ascend others wherewith 't is complicated must ascend with it and whatever be the account on which divers particles stick firmly together the aggregate will be too heavy or unwieldy to be raised Which I therefore take notice of because that though usually 't is on the roughness and irregularity of corpuscles that their cohesion depends yet it sometimes happens that the smoothness and flatness of their surfaces makes them so stick together as to resist a total divulsion as may be illustrated by what I have said of the cohesion of polished marbles and the plates of glass and by the fixity of glass it self in the fire From this account of the Causes or Requisites of Fixity may be deduced the following means of giving or adding Fixation to a body that was before either Volatile or less fixt These means may be reduced to two general Heads First the action of the Fire as the parts of the body exposed to it are thereby made to operate variously on one another And next the association of the particles of a volatile body with those of some proper additament Which term of proper I rather imploy than that one would expect of fixt because 't will ere long appear that in certain cases some volatile bodies may more conduce to the fixation of other volatile bodies than some fixt Ones doe But these two Instruments of Fixation being but general I shall propose four or five more particular ones CHAP. II. AND first in some cases it may conduce to Fixation that either by an additament or by the operation of the fire the parts of a body be brought to touch each other in large portions of their surfaces For that from such a contact there will follow such a mutual cohesion as
Colcothar stuck fast enough to them not to be easily driven away And if Oil of Vitriol be in a due proportion dropt upon Salt of Tartar there results a Tartarum vitriolatum wherein the acid and alkalizate parts cohere so strongly that 't is not an ordinary degree of fire will be able to disjoyn them Insomuch that divers Chymists have though very erroniously thought this compounded Salt to be indestructible But a less heavy liquour than the ponderous Oil of Vitriol may by an Alkaly be more strongly detained than that Oil it self experience having assured me that Spirit of Salt being dropt to satiety upon a fixt Alkaly I used either that of Nitre or of Tartar there would be made so strict an union that having without additaments distilled the resulting salt with a strong and lasting fire it appeared not at all considerably to be wrought upon and was not so much as melted But 't is not the bare Mixture or Commistion of Volatile particles with Fixt ones yea though the former be predominant in quantity that will suffice to elevate the latter For unlesse the figures of the latter be congruous and fitted to fasten to the other the volatile parts will fly away in the Heat and leave the rest as fixt as before as when sand or ashes are wetted or drenched with water they quickly part with that water without parting with any degree of their Fixity But on the other side it is not always necessary that the body which is fitted to destroy or much abate the volatility of another substance should be it self fixt For if there be a skilful or lucky coaptation of the figures of the particles of both the bodies these particles may take such hold of one another as to compose corpuscles that will neither by reason of their strict union be divided by Heat nor by reason of their resulting grossness be elevated even by a strong fire or at least by such a degree of Heat as would have sufficed to raise more indisposed bodies than either of the separate Ingredients of the mixture This observation if duly made out does so much favour our Doctrine about the Mechanical Origine of Fixation and may be of such use not onely to Chymists in some of their operations but to Philosophers in assigning the causes of divers Phaenomena of Nature that it may be worth while to exemplifie it by some Instances The first whereof I shall take from an usual practice of the Chymists themselves which I the rather doe to let you see that such known Experiments are too often over-looked by them that make them but yet may hint or confirm Theories to those that reflect on them The Instance I here speak of is that which is afforded by the vulgar Preparation of Bezoardicum Minerale For though the rectified Butter or Oil of Antimony and the Spirit of Nitre that are put together to make this white Praecipitate are both of them distilled liquours yet the copious powder that results from their Union is by that Union of volatile parts so far fixt that after they have edulcorated it with water they prescribe the calcining of it in a Crucible for five or six hours which operation it could not bear unless it had attained to a considerable fixation This discourse supposes with the generality of Chymists that the addition of a due quantity of spirit of Nitre is necessary to be employed in making the Bezoardicum Minerale But if it be a true Observation which is attributed to the Learned Guntherus Billichius but which I had no Furnace at hand to examine when I heard of it if I say it be true that a Bezoardicum Minerale may be obtained without spirit of Nitre barely by a slow evaporation made in a Glasse-dish of the more fugitive parts of the Oil of Antimony this Instance will not indeed be proper in this place but yet will belong to the second of the foregoing ways of introducing Fixity I proceed now to alleage other particulars in favour of the above-mentioned Observation If you take strong Spirit of Salt that when the Glass is unstopt will smoak of it self in the cold air and satiate it with the volatile Spirit of Vrine the superfluous moisture being abstracted you will obtain by this preparation which you may remember I long since communicated to you and divers other Virtuosi a compounded Salt scarce if at all distinguishable from Sal Armoniac and which will not as the Salts it consists of will doe before their coalition easily fly up of it self into the air but will require a not despicable degree of fire to sublime it Of these semivolatile Compositions of Salt I have made and elsewhere mentioned others which I shall not here repeat but passe on to other Instances pertinent to our present design I lately mentioned that the Volatility of the spirits of Nitre may be very much abated by bringing them to coagulate into Crystalls with particles of corroded Silver but I shall now add that I guessed and by trial found that these Nitrous spirits may be made much more fixt by the addition of the Spirit of Salt which if it be good will of it self smoak in the Air. For having dissolved a convenient quantity of Crystalls of Silver in distilled water and precipitated them not with a Solution of Salt but the Spirit of Salt the phlegm being abstracted and some few of the looser saline particles though the remaining masse were prest with a violent fire that kept the Retort red-hot for a good while yet the Nitrous and Saline spirits would by no means be driven away from the Silver but continued in fusion with it and when the masse was taken out these Spirits did so abound in it that it had no appearance of a Metal but looked rather like a thick piece of Horn. The next Instance I shall name is afforded us by that kind of Turbith which may be made by Oil of Vitriol in stead of the Aqua fortis imployed in the common Turpethum Minerale For though Oil of Vitriol be a distilled liquour and Mercury a body volatile enough yet when we abstracted four or five parts of Oil of Vitriol from one of Quick-silver especially if the operation were repeated and then washed off as much as we could of the saline particles of the Oil of Vitriol yet those that remained adhering to the Mercury made it far more fixt than either of the liquours had been before and inabled it even in a Crucible to endure such a degree of fire before it could be driven away as I confess I somewhat wondered at The like Turbith may be made with Oil of Sulphur per Campanam But this is nothing to what Helmont tells us of the operation of his Alkahest where he affirms that that Menstruum which is volatile enough being abstracted from running Mercury not onely coagulates it but leaves it fixt so that it will endure the brunt of fires acuated by Bellows omnem follium ignem
If this be certain it will not be a slender proof that Fixity may be Mechanically produced and however the Argument will be good in reference to the Helmontian Spagyrists For if as one would expect there do remain some particles of the Menstruum with those of the metal it will not be denied that two volatile substances may perfectly fix one another And if as Helmont seems to think the Menstruum be totally abstracted this supposition will the more favour our Doctrine about Fixity since if there be no material additament left with the Quick-silver the Fixation cannot so reasonably be ascribed to any thing as to some new Mechanical modification and particularly to some change of Texture introduced into the Mercury it self And that you may think this the less improbable I will now proceed to some Instances whereof the first shall be this That having put a mixture made of a certain proportion of two dry as well as volatile bodies viz. Sal Armoniac and Flower or very fine powder of Sulphur to half its weight of common running Mercury and elevated this mixture three or four times from it in a conveniently shaped and not over-wide glass the Mercury that lay in the bottom in the form of a ponderous and somewhat purplish powder was by this operation so fixt that it long endured a strong fire which at length was made so strong that it melted the Glass and kept it melted without being strong enough to force up the Mercury which by some trials not so proper to be here mentioned seemed to have its salivating and emetick powers extraordinarily infringed and sometimes quite suppressed But this onely upon the bye In all the other Instances wherewith I shall conclude these Notes I shall employ one Menstruum Oil of Vitriol and shew you the efficacy of it in fixing some parts of volatile bodies with some parts of it self by which examples it may appear that a Volatile body may not onely lessen the volatility of another body as in the lately mentioned case of our spirituous Sal Armoniac but that two Substances that apart were volatile may compose a third that will not onely be less volatile but considerably if not altogether fixt We mixed then by degrees about equal parts of Oil of Vitriol and Oil of Turpentine and though each of them single especially the latter will ascend with a moderate fire in a Sand-furnace yet after the Distillation was ended we had a considerable quantity sometimes if I misremember not a fifth or sixth part of a Caput Mortuum black as a Coal and whereof a great part was of a scarce to be expected fixtness in the fire To give a higher proof of the disposition that Oil of Vitriol has to let some of its parts grow fixt by combination with those of an exceeding volatile additament I mixed this liquour with an equal or double weight of highly rectified Spirit of Wine and not onely after but sometimes without previous digestion I found that the fluid parts of the mixture being totally abstracted there would remain a pretty quantity of a black Substance so fixt as to afford just cause of wonder And because Camphire is esteemed the most fugitive of consistent bodies in regard that being but laid in the free air without any help of the fire it will fly all away I tried what Oil of Vitriol abstracted from Camphire would doe and found at the bottom of the Retort a greater quantity than one would expect of a Substance as black as pitch and almost as far from the volatility as from the colour of Camphire though it appeared not that any of the Gum had sublim'd into the neck of the Retort From all which Instances it seems manifestly enough to follow that in many cases there needs nothing to make associated particles whether volatile or not become fixt but either to implicate or intangle them among themselves or bring them to touch one another according to large portions of their surfaces or by both these ways conjoyntly or by some others to procure the firm Cohaesion of so many particles that the resulting Corpuscles be too big or heavy to be by the degree of fire wherein they are said to be fixt driven up into the Air. FINIS Experiments and Notes ABOUT THE MECHANICAL ORIGINE OR PRODUCTION OF CORROSIVENESS AND CORROSIBILITY By the Honourable ROBERT BOYLE Esq Fellow of the R. Society LONDON Printed by E. Flesher for R. Davis Bookseller in Oxford 1675. Experiments and Notes ABOUT THE MECHANICAL PRODUCTION OF CORROSIVENESS AND CORROSIBILITY SECT I. About the Mechanical Origine of Corrosiveness I Do not in the following Notes treat of Corrosiveness in their strict sense of the word who ascribe this Quality only to Liquors that are notably acid or sowre such as Aqua fortis Spirit of Salt Vinegar Juice of Lemons c. but that I may not be oblig'd to overlook Urinous Oleous and divers other Solvents or to coin new names for their differing Solutive Powers I presume to employ the word Corrosiveness in a greater latitude so as to make it almost equivalent to the Solutive power of Liquors referring other Menstruums to those that are Corrosive or fretting though not always as to the most proper yet as to the principal and best known species which I the less scruple here to do because I have elsewhere more distinctly enumerated and sorted the Solvents of bodies The Attributes that seem the most proper to qualifie a Liquor to be Corrosive are all of them Mechanical being such as are these that follow First That the Menstruum consist of or abound with Corpuscles not too big to get in at the Pores or Commissures of the body to be dissolved nor yet be so very minute as to pass through them as the beams of Light do through Glass or to be unable by reason of their great slenderness and flexibility to disjoyn the parts they invade Secondly That these Corpuscles be of a shape fitting them to insinuate themselves more or less into the Pores or Commissures above-mentioned in order to the dissociating of the solid parts Thirdly That they have a competent degree of solidity to disjoyn the Particles of the body to be dissolved which Solidity of Solvent corpuscles is somewhat distinct from their bulk mention'd in the first Qualification as may appear by comparing a stalk of Wheat and a metalline Wire of the same Diameter or a flexible wand of Osier of the bigness of ones little finger with a rigid rod of Iron of the same length and thickness Fourthly That the Corpuscles of the Menstruum be agile and advantaged for motion such as is fit to disjoyn the parts of the invaded body either by their shape or their minuteness or their fitness to have their action befriended by adjuvant Causes such as may be first the pressure of the Atmosphere which may impell them into the Pores of bodies not fill'd with a Substance so resisting as common Air As we see
the cases wherein Nature may as I formerly noted imploy both the ways therein yet in most cases they sufficiently differ in regard that in the former way the subsiding of the dissolved body is chiefly if not only caused by the additional weight as well as action of the external Precipitant whereas in most of the instances of the later way the effect is produced either without salt of Tartar or any such Precipitant or by some other quality of the Precipitant more than by its weight or at least besides the weight it adds Though I forget not that I lately gave an example of a shining powder of Gold that fell to the bottom of a Menstruum without the help of an External Precipitant But that was done so slowly that it may be disputed whether it were a true Precipitation and I alledged it not as such but to shew that the increased bulk of Particles may make them unfit to swim in Menstruums wherein they swam whilst they were more minute And the like answer may be accommodated to the Precipitate per se newly mentioned This premised I proceed now to observe that the general way I last proposed contains in it several subordinate wayes that are more particular of which I shall now mention the chief that occur to me and though but briefly illustrate each of them by examples And first a Precipitation may be made if the saline or other dissolving particles of the Menstruum are mortified or rendred unfit for their former function by particles of a Precipitant that are of a contrary nature Thus Gold and some other minerals being dissolved in Aqua Regis will be precipitated with spirit of urine and other such liquors abounding with volatile and salino-sulphureous Corpuscles upon whose account it is that they act whence these salts themselves though cast into a Menstruum in a dry form will serve to make the like Precipitations And I the rather on this occasion mention Urinous spirits than Salt of Tartar because those volatile particles add much less of weight to the little Concretions which compose the Precipitated powder Upon instances of this kind many of the modern Chymists have built that Antipathy betwixt the Salts of the solvent and those of the Menstruum to which they ascribe almost all Precipitations But against this I have represented something already and shall partly now and partly in the sequel of this discourse add some farther reasons of my not being satisfied with this Doctrine For besides that 't is insufficient to reach many of the Phaenomena of Precipitations as will ere long be shown and besides that 't is not easie to make out that there is any real antipathy betwixt inanimate bodies I consider 1. That some of those Menstruums to which this Antipathy is attributed do after a short commotion whereby they are disposed to make convenient occursions and coalitions amicably unite into concretions participating of both the Ingredients as I have somewhere shewn by an Example purposely devis'd to make this out to do which I dropped a clear solution of fixed Nitre instead of the usual one of common salt upon a solution of silver in Aqua-fortis For the saline particles of the Solvent and those of the Precipitant will as I have elsewhere recirecited for the most part friendly unite into such Crystals of Nitre for the main as they were obtained from And though this notion of the Chymists if well explained be applicable to far more instances than the proposers of it seemed to have thought on and may be made good use of in Practice yet I take it to be such as is not true Universally and where it is true ought to be explicated according to Mechanical Principles For if the particles of the Menstruum and those of the Precipitant be so framed that upon the action of the one upon the other there will be produced Corpuscles too big and unwieldy to continue in the state of fludity there will insue a Precipitation But if the constitution of the corpuscles of the Precipitating and of the Dissolved body be such that the Precipitant also it self is fit to be a Menstruum to dissolve that body in then though there be an union of the Salts of the Precipitant and the metal or other Solutum and perhaps of the solvent too yet a Precipitation will not necessarily follow though the saline particles of the two liquors seemed by the heat and ebullition excited between them upon their meeting to exercise a great and mutual antipathy To satisfie some Ingenious men about this particular I dissolved Zink or Speltar in a certain urinous spirit for there are more than one that may serve the turn and then put to it a convenient quantity of a proper acid spirit but though there would be a manifest conflict thereby occasioned betwixt the two liquors yet the speltar remained dissolved in the mixture And I remember that for the same purpose I devised another Experiment which is somewhat more easie and more clear I dissolved Copper calcined per se or even crude in strong spirit of salt for unless it be such it will not be so proper and having put to it by degrees a good quantity of spirit of Sal-Armoniac or fermented Urine though there would be a great commotion with hissing and bubbles produced the Copper would not be precipitated because this Urinous spirit will as well as the Salt and much more readily dissolve the same metal and it would be kept dissolved notwithstanding their operation on one another the intervening of which and their action upon the metalline corpuscles may be gathered from hence that the green solution made with spirit of salt alone will by the supervening urinous spirits be changed either into a blewish green or if the proportion of this spirit be very great into a rich blew almost like ultramarine And from these two Experiments we may probably argue that when the Precipitation of a metal c. insues it is not barely or the account of the supposed Antipathy betwixt the Salts but because the causes of that seeming Antipathy do likewise upon a Mechanical account dispose the Corpuscles of the confounded liquors so to cohere as to be too unwieldy for the fluid part CHAP. VI. ANother way whereby the dissolving particles of a Menstruum may be rendred unfit to sustain the dissolved body is to present them another that they can more easily work on A notable Experiment of this you have in the common practice of Refiners who to recover the Silver out of Lace and other such mixtures wherein it abounds use to dissolve it in Aqua fortis and then in the solution leave Copper plates for a whole night or many hours But if you have a mind to see the Experiment without waiting so long you may imploy the way whereby I have often quickly dispatched it As soon then as I have dissolved a convenient quantity which needs not be a great one of Silver in cleansed
it is this EXPER. VI. THat false Locks as they call them of some Hair being by curling or otherwise brought to a certain degree of driness or of stiffness will be attracted by the flesh of some persons or seem to apply themselves to it as Hair is wont to do to Amber or Jet excited by rubbing Of this I had a Proof in such Locks worn by two very Fair Ladies that you know For at some times I observed that they could not keep their Locks from flying to their Cheeks and though neither of them made any use or had any need of Painting from sticking there When one of these Beauties first shew'd me this Experiment I turn'd it into a Complemental Raillery as suspecting there might be some trick in it though I after saw the same thing happen to the others Locks too But as she is no ordinary Virtuosa she very ingeniously remov'd my suspicions and as I requested gave me leave to satisfie my self further by desiring her to hold her warm hand at a convenient distance from one of those Locks taken off and held in the air For as soon as she did this the lower end of the Lock which was free applied it self presently to her hand which seem'd the more strange because so great a multitude of Hair would not have been easily attracted by an ordinary Electrical Body that had not been considerably large or extraordinarily vigorous This repeated Observation put me upon inquiring among some other young Ladies whether they had observed any such like thing but I found little satisfaction to my Question except from one of them eminent for being ingenious who told me that sometimes she had met with these troublesome Locks but that all she could tell me of the Circumstances which I would have been inform'd about was that they seem'd to her to flye most to her Cheeks when they had been put into a somewhat stiff Curle and when the Weather was frosty * Some years after the making the Experiments about the Production of Electricity having a desire to try whether in the Attractions made by Amber the motions excited by the air had a considerable Interest or whether the Effect were not due rather to the Emission and Retraction of Effluvia which being of a viscous nature may consist of Particles either branch'd or hookt or otherwise fit for some kind of Cohesion and capable of being stretch'd and of shrinking again as Leather Thongs are To examine this I say I thought the fittest way if 't were practicable would be to try whether Amber would draw a light Body in a Glass whence the air was pumpt out And though the Trial of this seem'd very difficult to make and we were somewhat discouraged by our first attempt wherein the weight of the ambient air broke our Receiver which chanced to prove too weak when the internal air had been with extraordinary diligence pumpt out yet having a vigorous piece of Amber which I had caus'd to be purposely turn'd and polish'd for Electrical Experiments I afterwards repeated the Trial and found that in warm Weather it would retain a manifest power of attracting for several minutes for it stirred a pois'd Needle after above 1 4 of an hour after we had done rubbing it Upon which encouragement we suspended it being first well chafed in a Glass Receiver that was not great just over a light Body and making haste with our Air-Pumb to exhaust thâ— Glass when the Air was withdrawn we did by a Contrivance let down the suspended Amber till it came very near the Straw or Feather and perceived as we expected that in some Trials upon the least Contact it would lift it up and in others for we repeated the Experiment the Amber would raise it without touching it that is would attract it You will probably be the less dispos'd to believe That Electrical Attractions must proceed from the Substantial Forms of the Attrahents or rom the Predominancy of this or that Chymical Principle in them if I acquaint you with some odd Trials wherein the Attraction of light Bodies seem'd to depend upon very small circumstances And though forbearing at present to offer you my thoughts about the cause of these surprising Phaenomena I propose it onely as a Probleme to your self and your curious Friends yet the main circumstances seeming to be of a Mechanical Nature the recital of my Trials will not be impertinent to the Design and Subject of this Paper EXPER. VII I Took then a large and vigorous piece of Amber conveniently shaped for my purpose and a downy feather such as grows upon the Bodies not Wings or Tails of a somewhat large Chicken Then having moderately excited the Electrick I held the Amber so near it that the neighbouring part of the feather was drawn by it and stuck fast to it but the remoter parts continued in their former posture This done I applyed my fore-finger to these erected downy feathers and immediately as I expected they left their preceeding posture and applied themselves to it as if it had been an Electrical Body And whether I offered to them my nail or the pulpy part of my finger or held my finger towards the right hand or the left or directly over these downy feathers that were near the little Quill did nimbly and for ought appear'd equally turn themselves towards it and fasten themselves to it And to shew that the streams that issued out of so warm a Body as my finger were not necessary to attract as men speak the abovementioned feathers instead of my finger I applied to them after the same manner a little Cylindrical Instrument of Silver to which they bowed and fastened themselves as they had done to my finger though the tip of this Instrument were presented to them in several postures The like success I had with the end of an Iron Key and the like also with a cold piece of polish'd black Marble and sometimes the feathers did so readily and strongly fasten themselves to these extraneous and unexcited Bodies that I have been able though not easily to make one of them draw the feather from the Amber it self But it is diligently to be observ'd that this unusual attraction happened onely whilst the electrical operation of the excited Amber continued strong enough to sustain the feathers For afterwards neither the approach of my finger nor that of the other bodies would make the downy feathers change their posture Yet as soon as ever the Amber was by a light affriction excited again the feather would be disposed to apply it self again to the abovementioned Bodies And lest there should be any peculiarity in that particular feather I made the Trials with others provided they were not long enough to exceed the sphere of activity of the Amber and found the Experiment to answer my expectation I made the Experiment also at differing times and with some months if not rather years of interval but with the like success And lest