Page:The Sceptical Chymist.djvu/64

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THE SCEPTICAL

with a small quantity of a certain Saline Substance I prepar’d, I can easily enough sublime Gold into the form of red Crystalls of a considerable length; and many other wayes may Gold be disguis’d, and help to constitute Bodies of very differing Natures both from It and from one another, and nevertheless be afterward reduc’d to the self-same Numerical, Yellow, Fixt, Ponderous and Malleable Gold it was before its commixture. Nor is it only the fixedst of Metals, but the most fugitive, that I may employ in favour of our Proposition: for Quicksilver will with divers Metals compose an Amalgam, with divers Menstruums it seems to be turn’d into a Liquor, with Aqua fortis will be brought into either a red or white Powder or precipitate, with Oyl of Vitriol into a pale Yellow one, with Sulphur it will compose a blood-red and volatile Cinaber, with some Saline Bodies it will ascend in form of a Salt which will be dissoluble in water; with Regulus of Antimony and Silver I have seen it sublim’d into a kinde of Crystals, with another Mixture I reduc’d it into a malleable Body, into a hard and brittle Substance by another: And