Page:The Sceptical Chymist.djvu/74

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50
THE SCEPTICAL

to be very differing from any thing that I had observ’d to proceed from the steam of Amber purposely (for that is not usual) distilled per se in close Vessels. Thus having, for Tryals sake, kindled Camphire, and catcht the Smoak that copiously ascended out of the Flame, it condens’d into a Black and unctuous Soot, which would not have been guess’d by the Smell or other Properties to have proceeded from Camphire: whereas having (as I shall otherwhere more fully declare) expos’d a quantity of that Fugitive Concrete to a gentle heat in a close Glass-Vessel, it sublim’d up without seeming to have lost any thing of its whiteness, or its Nature, both which it retain’d, though afterwards I so encreased the Fire as to bring it to Fusion. And, besides Camphire, there are divers other Bodies (that I elsewhere name) in which the heat in close Vessels is not wont to make any separation of Heterogeneities, but only a comminution of Parts, those that rise first being Homogeneal with the others, though subdivided into smaller Particles: whence Sublimations have been stiled, The Pestles of the Chymists. But not here