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 Consideration 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 Alkali 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 Mercury most of the
the 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
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 sixtness 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 Load-stone 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 fusible and therefore we are not to exact a Reason why it is so
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 mucha s 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 their Admirers cherish
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 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
Experiments Notes c. ABOUT THE Mechanical Origine or Production Of divers particular QUALITIES Among which is inserted a Discourse of the IMPERFECTION OF THE CHYMIST's Doctrine OF QUALITIES Together with some 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 1676. THE PUBLISHER TO THE Reader TO keep the Reader from being at all surpriz'd at the Date of the Title-Page I must inform him that a good part of the ensuing Tracts were Printed off and in my custody the last year and the rest had come out with them divers moneths ago if the Noble Author had not been hinder'd from committing them to the Press by the desire and hope of being able in a short time to send them abroad more numerous and by his being hinder'd to do so partly by Remove partly by the want of some Papers that were odly lost or spoil'd and partly by the sickness of himself and divers of his near Relations And some of these Impediments do yet suppress what the Author intended should have made a part of the Book which now he suffers to be publish'd without them though divers of his Papers about some other particular Qualities have been written so long ago as to have lain for many years neglected among other of his old Writings Which that he may have both leasure and health to review and fit for publication is the ardent wish of the sincere Lovers of Real Knowledge who have reason to look on it as no mean proof of his constant kindness to Experimental Philosophy that in these Tracts he perseveres in his course of freely and candidly communicating his Experiments and Observations to the publick notwithstanding the liberty that hath been too boldly taken to mention them as their own by some later Writers as particularly by the Compiler of the Treatise entitul'd Polygraphice who in two Chapters hath allow'd himself to present his Reader with alove Fifty Experiments taken out of our Authors Book of Colours without owning any one of them to Him or so much as naming him or his Book in either of those Chapters nor that I remember in any of the others Nor did I think this practice justified by the confession made in the Preface importing that the Compiler had taken the particulars he deliver'd from the Writings of others For this general and perfunctory acknowledgment neither doth right to particular Authors nor by naming them enables the Reader to know whether the things deliver'd come from persons fit to be credited or not And therefore since 't is but too likely that such Concealment of the Names if not Usurpation of the Labours of the Benefactors to Philosophy will prove much more forbidding to many others to impart their Experiments than as yet they have to our generous Author it seems to be the Interest of the Commonwealth of Learning openly to discountenance so discouraging a practice and to shew that they do not think it fit that Possessors of useful pieces of knowledge should be strongly tempted to envy them to the Publick to the end onely that a few Compilers should not be put upon so reasonable and easie a work as by a few words or names to shew themselves just if not grateful But not to keep the Reader any longer from the perusal of these Tracts themselves I shall conclude with intimating onely that what our Author saith in one of them concerning the Insufficiency of the Chymical Hypothesis for explaining the Effects of Nature is not at all intended by him to derogate from the sober Professors of Chymistry or to discourage them from useful Chymical Operations forasmuch as I had the satisfaction some years since to see in the Authors hands a Discourse of his about the Usefulness of Chymistry for the Advancement of Natural Philosophy with which also 't is hoped he will e're long gratifie the Publick ADVERTISEMENTS Relating to the following TREATISE TO obviate some misapprehensions that may arise concerning the ensuing Notes about Particular Qualities it may not be improper to adde something in this place to what has been said in another Paper in reference to those Notes and consequently to premise to the particular Experiments some few general Advertisements about them And I. we may consider that there may be three differing ways of treating Historically of Particular Qualities For either one may in a full and methodical History prosecute the Phaenomena or one may make a Collection of various Experiments and Observations whence may be gathered divers Phaenomena to illustrate several but not all of the Heads or Parts of such an ample or methodical History or in the third place one may in a more confin'd way content ones self to deliver such Experiments and Observations of the Production or the Destruction or Change of this or that Quality as being duly reason'd on may suffice to shew wherein the nature of that Quality doth consist especially in opposition to those erroneous conceits that have been entertained about it Of the First of these three ways of treating of a Quality I pretend not to have given any compleat example but you will find that I have begun such Histories in my Specimens about Fluidity and Firmness and in the Experiments Observations c. that I have put together about Cold. The Second sort of Historical Writings I have given an Instance of in my Experiments about Colours but in these ensuing Notes the occasion I had to make them having obliged me chiefly to have an eye to the disproval of the errours of the Peripateticks and the Chymists about them I hope I shall not be thought to have fallen very short in my Attempt if I have here and there perform'd what may be required in the Third way of writing Historically of a Quality my present Design being chiefly 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
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 underservedly 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 other things into
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 as 't is commonly
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 granted not to be
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 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 smaliness 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 susible 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 perform such Effects whether
in close Vessels be made to carry over with it some of the Lead As we clearly found by the increased weight of the Quick-silver that passed into the Receiver which by the way may make us cautious how we conclude Quick-silver to be pure meerly from its having been distilled over There remains but one body more heavy than those I come from naming and that is Gold which being also of a fixity so great that 't is indeed admirable I doe not wonder that not onely the more wary Naturalists but the more severe among the Chymists themselves should think it incapable of being volatilized But yet if we consider how very minute parts Gold may be rationally supposed to consist of and to be divisible into me thinks it should not seem impossible that if men could light on Volatil Salts endowed with figures fit to stick fast to the corpuscles of the Gold they would carry up with them bodies whose solidity can scarce be more extraordinary than their minuteness is And in effect we have made more than one Menstruum with which some particles of Gold may be carried up But when I employed that which I recommended to you formerly under the name of Menstruum peracutum which consists mainly and sometimes onely of Spirit of Nitre several times drawn from Butter of Antimony I was able without a very violent fire in a few hours to elevate so much crude Gold as in the neck of the Retort afforded me a considerable Quantity of Sublimate which I have had red as blood and whose consisting partly of Gold manifestly appeared by this that I was able with ease to reduce that metall out of it In reckoning up the Instruments of Volatilization 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 steams 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 away 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
put among themselves or with those of the additament into a complicated state or intangled contexture This being the usual and principal way of producing Fixity we shall dwell somewhat the longer upon it and give Instances of several degrees of Fixation For though they do not produce that quality in the strictest acceptation of the word Fixity yet 't is usefull in our present inquiry to take notice by what means that volatility comes to be gradually abated since that may facilitate our understanding how the Volatility of a body comes to be totally abated and consequently the body to be fixt CHAP. IV. AND first we find that a fixt additament if its parts be conveniently shaped may easily give a degree of fixity to a very volatile body Thus Spirit of Nitre that will of it self easily enough fly away in the Air having its saline particles associated with those of fixt Nitre or salt of Tartar will with the Alkaly compose a salt of a Nitrous nature which will endure to be melted in a Crucible without being deprived even of its Spirits And I have found that the spirits of Nitre that abound in Aqua fortis being concoagulated with the Silver they corrode though one would not expect that such subtile Corpuscles should stick fast to so compact and solid a body as Silver yet Crystalls produced by their Coalition being put into a Retort may be kept a pretty while in fusion before the metal will let go the Nitrous spirits When we poured Oil of Vitriol upon the Calx of Vitriol though many Phlegmatick and other Sulphureous particles were driven away by the excited Heat yet the saline parts that combined with the fixt ones of the 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 Urine the superfluous moisture being abstracted you will obtain by this preparation which you may remember I long since communicated to you and divers other Virtusi 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
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 â—itting 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 that water will by the prevalent pressure of the Ambient whether Air or Water be raised to the height of some inches in capillary Glasses and in the pores of Spunges whose consistent parts being of easier cession than the sides of Glass-pipes those Pores will be enlarged and consequently those sides disjoyn'd as appears by the dilatation and swelling of the Spunge And secondly the agitation that the intruding Corpuscles may be fitted to receive in those Pores or Commissures by the transcursion of some subtile ethereal matter or by the numerous knocks and other pulses of the swimming or tumbled Corpuscles of the Menstruum it self which being a fluid body must have its small parts perpetually and variously moved whereby the engaged Corpuscles like so many little Wedges and Leavers may be enabled to wrench open or force asunder the little parts between which they have insinuated themselves But I shall not here prosecute this Theory which to be handled fully would require a discourse apart since these Conjectures are propos'd but to make it probable in the general That the Corrosiveness of bodies may be deduced from Mechanical Principles But whether best from the newly propos'd ones or any other need not be anxiously consider'd in these Notes where the things mainly intended and rely'd on are the Experiments and Phaenomena themselves EXPER. I. 'T Is obvious that though the recently exprest Juice of Grapes be sweet whilst it retains the Texture that belongs to it as 't is new especially if it be made of some sorts of Grapes that grow in hot Regions yet after fermentation 't will in tract of time as 't were spontaneously degenerate into Vinegar In which Liquor to a multitude of the more solid Corpuscles of the Must their frequent and mutual Attritions may be supposed to have given edges like those of the blades of swords or knives and in which perhaps the confused agitation that preceded extricated or as it were unsheathed some acid particles that deriv'd from the sap of the Vine or perchance more originally from the juice of the Earth were at first in the Must but lay conceal'd and as it were sheathed among the other particles wherewith they were associated when they were prest out of the Grapes Now this Liquor that by the forementioned or other like Mechanical Changes is become Vinegar does so abound with Corpuscles which on the account of their edges or their otherwise sharp and penetrative shape are Acid and Corrosive that the better sort of it will without any preparation dissolve Coral Crabs-eyes and even some Stones Lapis stellaris in particular as also Minium or the Calx of Lead and even crude Copper as we have often tried And not onely the distill'd Spirit of it will do those things more powerfully and perform some other things that meer Vinegar cannot but the saline particles wont to remain after Distillation may by being distill'd and cohobated per se or by being skilfully united with the foregoing Spirit be brought to a Menstruum of no small efficacy in the dissolution and other preparations of metalline bodies too compact for the meer Spirit it self to work upon From divers other sweet things also may Vinegar be made and even of Honey skilfully fermented with a small proportion of common water may be made a Vinegar stronger than many of the common Wine-vinegars as has been affirmed to me by a very candid Physician who had occasion to deal much in Liquors EXPER. II. NOt onely several dry Woods and other Bodies that most of them pass for insipid but Honey and Sugar themselves afford by Distillation Acid Spirits that will dissolve Coral Pearls c. and will also corrode some Metals and metalline Bodies themselves as I have often found by Trial. So that the violent Operation of the fire that destroys what they call the Form of the distill'd body and works as a Mechanical Agent by agitating breaking dissipating and under a new constitution reassembling the parts procures for the Distiller an Acid Corrosive Menstruum which whether it be brought to pass by making the Corpuscles rub one another into the figure of little sharp blades or by splitting some solid parts into sharp or cutting Corpuscles or by unsheathing as it were some parts that during the former Texture of the body did not appear to be acid or whether it be rather effected by some other Mechanical way may in due time be further considered EXPER. III. 'T Is observ'd by Refiners Goldsmiths and Chymists that Aqua Fortis and Aqua Regia which are Corrosive Menstruums dissolve Metals the former of them Silver and the latter Gold much more speedily and copiously when an external heat gives their intestine motions a new degree of Vehemency or Velocity which is but a mechanical thing and yet this superadded measure of Agitation is not onely in the abovemention'd Instances a powerfully assistant Cause in the Solutions made by the lately mention'd Corrosive Liquors but is that without which some Menstruums are not wont sensibly to corrode some bodies at all as we have tried in keeping Quick-silver in three or four times its weight of Oyl of Vitriol since in this Menstruum I found not the Mercury to be dissolved or corroded though I kept it a long time in
first with Spirit of Vinegar and then of Wine after the long and laborious way prescribed by Basilius and Zwelfer but easily and expeditiously by a simple Distillation of crude Verdigrease of the better sort For when you have with this Liquor being if there be need once rectified dissolv'd as much good Salt of Tartar as 't will take up in the cold if you draw off the Menstruum ad siccitatem the remaining dry Salt will be manifestly alter'd in Texture even to the eye and will readily enough in high rectified Spirit of Wine afford a Solution which I have found considerable in order to divers uses that concern not our present Discourse EXPER. VI. TO the Consideration of the Followers of Helmont I shall recommend an Experiment of that famous Chymist's which seems to sute exceeding well with the Doctrine propos'd in this Section For he tells us that if by a subtle Menstruum to which he ascribes that power Quicksilver be devested or depriv'd of its external Sulphur as he terms it all the rest of the fluid Metal which he wittily enough stiles the Kernel of Mercury will be no longer corrosible by it So that upon this Supposition though common Quicksilver be observ'd to be so obnoxious to Aqua Fortis that the same quantity of that Liquor will dissolve more of it than of any other Metal yet if by the deprivation of some portion of it the latent Texture of the Metal be alter'd though not that I remember the visible appearance of it the Body that was before so easily dissolved by Aqua Fortis ceases to be at all dissoluble by it EXPER. VII AS for those Chymists of differing Sects that agree in giving credit to the 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 suriously 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 resisting 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
light Bodies to flow from the substantial form of Amber would not expect it in a Body so changed and deprived of its noblest parts Yet this Caput mortuum was so far from having lost its Electrical Faculty that it seemed to attract more vigorously than Amber it self is wont to do before it be committed to Distillation And from the foregoing Instances afforded us by the Glass of Antimony we may learn that when the form of a Body seems to be destroyed by a fiery Analysis that dissipates the parts of it the remaining substance may yet be endowed with Electricity as the Caput mortuum of Amber may acquire it as in the case of the Glass of Antimony made of the Calx and of the Flowers And from the second Example above-mentioned and from common Glass which is Electrical we may also learn that Bodies that are neither of them apart observed to be endowed with Electricity may have that Vertue result in the compounded substance that they constitute though it be but a factitious Body To the foregoing Experiments whose Success is wont to be uniform enough I shall adde the Recital of a surprising Phaenomenon which though not constant may help to make it probable that Electrical Attractions need not be suppos'd still to proceed from the substantial or even from the essential Form of the Attrahent but may be the effects of unheeded and as it were fortuitous Causes And however I dare not suppress so strange an Observation and therefore shall relate that which I had the luck to make of an odd sort of Electrical Attraction as it seem'd not taken notice of that I know of by any either Naturalist or other Writer and 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 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 steams 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 after wards 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 left you should think these Phaenomena proceed from some peculiarity in the piece of Amber I employed I shall add that I found uniformity enough in the