Page:The Sceptical Chymist.djvu/114

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THE SCEPTICAL

enough to be Expell’d or carried up, makes no Separation at all; as may appear by a Mixture of Colliquated Silver and Gold, whose Component Metals may be easily Sever’d by Aqua Fortis, or Aqua Regis (according to the Predominancy of the Silver or the Gold) but in the Fire alone, though vehement, the Metals remain unsever’d, the Fire only dividing the Body into smaller Particles (whose Littlenesse may be argu’d from their Fluidity) in which either the little nimble Atoms of Fire, or its brisk and numberless strokes upon the Vessels, hinder Rest and Continuity, without any Sequestration of Elementary Principles. Moreover, the Fire sometimes does not Separate, so much as Unite, Bodies of a differing Nature; provided they be of an almost resembling Fixedness, and have in the Figure of their Parts an Aptness to Coalition, as we see in the making of many Plaisters, Oyntments, &c. And in such Metalline Mixtures as that made by Melting together two parts of clean Brass with one of pure Copper, of which some Ingenious Trades-men cast such curious Patterns (for Gold and Silver Works)