By fluxing powders. The separation of Metalls from their Mines is done divers ways, viz. by boiling, and melting with fluxing powders, such as are salt Alcali, Litharge, salt fluxile, the drosse of Glasse, Salt Gemme, Salt Petre, &c. Let them bee put in a Crucible, and melted in a furnace; so will the Metall, or regulus fall to the bottome of the Crucible; but the other matter will swim above, and become drosse. Thou shall boil this Metalline regulus in a reverberating furnace so long, till all the Metall become pure, and freed from all its drosse; by this means the metall is well digested, and as I may say refined from all its drosse.
Many times one mine contains more then one Metall, as Copper and Silver, Copper and Gold, Lead and Silver, Tinne and Silver, you shall know it by this, if the Metalline Regulus after Reverberation in a melting pot bee sufficiently after the true manner dissolved. For in it are all imperfect Metalls separated, as are Iron, Copper, Tin, and Lead, and so with a double quantity of Lead to the Regulus being put to it, they all goe into a fume, and only fine Silver, or Gold are left behind in the pot.
By Aqua fortis.
Also two or three Metalls mixed together may bee separated in Aqua fortis, and extracted the one from[Pg 86] the other. If two Metalls or one bee resolved, the other will fall to the bottome like sand, and be precipitated: and be after this manner separated. Also Metalls may be separated by flowing after this process: By Sulphur.Make metals flow, and when they are in flux, cast into them the best flower of Sulphur as you can get, viz. an ounce to every pound of the metall, and let it burn, and by that means it wil draw up the lightest metall to the top, the heavy falling to the bottome. Then let them stand together till they be cold. A wonderfull power of Sulphur in separation. And so in one Regulus two metalls are found, not as before mutually mixed, but one separated from the other by the Sulphur, as by a partition, as Oyle divides two Waters, that they cannot bee joined together or mixed: Sulphur therefore is a singular Arcanum worthy of great commendations.
By Quicksilver.
Fixt metalls, as Gold and Silver, because they cannot wel bee extracted with Fire or Aqua fortis, must bee amalgamated with Quicksilver, and so separated and extracted, the Quicksilver being afterwards extracted and separated by a certaine degree of Distillation from the Calx of the metals, viz. Gold, & Silver.
After this manner also may other metalls, not only Gold, and Silver, but Copper, Iron, Tin, Lead, &c. as also whatsoever are prepared out of them, as red Electrum, the white Magnesia, Aurichalcum, calcined Lead, Laton, Brasse of Cauldrons, and whatsoever metalls of this kind are transmuted, bee with Quicksilver, but first being powdered, abstracted, and separated from what is heterogeneous. For the nature, and condition of Quicksilver is this, that it wil bee united, and amalgamed with metalls, but yet with one sooner then with another, according as the metall is of greater or lesse affinity to it.
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In this consideration fine Gold is the chiefest, then fine Silver, then Lead, then Tinne, then Copper, and lastly Iron.
So amongst transmuted metalls, the first is part with part, then Ash coloured Lead, then Laton, then Brasse of Caldrons, then red, and the newest white. Although for the first course Mercury may take no more then one metall, with which it is amalgamated: yet that Amalgama is to be strained hard through Leather, or Cotton cloath. For by this means nothing but the Quicksilver will passe through the Leather, or Cloath: and that metall which it did attract remains in the leather, or cloth like Calx, which afterwards thou maist with salt Alcali, or some other salt reduce into a metalline body by melting.
Now by this Art Quicksilver is much sooner sepa............