Chop. G9.] EEMEDTES DERIVED FROM EIRE. 383 



be wholly fused without being pulverized into small frag- 

 inents,^'' as we see done in the process of making the small 

 checquers, known as '^abaculi/' for mosaic work; some of 

 -which are of variegated colours, and of different shapes. If 

 glass is fused with sulphur, it will become as hard as stone. 



CHAP 68. (27.) MAllVELLOUS FACTS CONNECTED WITH FIRE. 



Having now described all the creations of human ingenuity, 

 reproductions, in fact, of Nature by the agency of art, it 

 cannot but recur to us, with a feeling of admiration, that there 

 is hardly any process which is not perfected through the 

 intervention of fire. Submit to its action some sandy soil, 

 and in one place it will yield glass, in another silver, in 

 another minium, and in others, again, lead and its several 

 varieties, pigments, and numerous medicaments. It is through 

 the agency of fire that stones"^ are melted into copper; by fire 

 that iron is produced, and subdued to our purposes ; by fire 

 that gold is purified ; by fire, too, that the stone is calcined, 

 which is to hold together the walls of our houses. 



Some materials, again, are all the better for being repeatedly 

 submitted to the action of fire ; and the same substance will 

 j-ield one product at the first fusion, another at the second, and 

 another at the third. °^ Charcoal, when it has passed through fire 

 and has been quenched, only begins to assume its active pro- 

 perties ; and, when it might be supposed to have been reduced 

 to annihilation, it is then that it has its greatest energies. An 

 element this, of immense, of boundless^ power, and, as to 

 which, it is a matter of doubt whether it does not create even 

 more than it destroys ! 



CHAP. 69. THREE REMEDIES DERIVED FROM FIRE AND FROM 



ASHES. 



Tire even has certain medicinal virtues of its own. "When 

 pestilences prevail, in consequence of the obscuration" of the 

 sun, it is a well-known fact, that if fires are lighted, they are 



5"' Tl)is is, probably, the meaning of " in guttas ;" a new reading, which 

 is only found in the Bamberg MS. 



S8 See B. xxxiv. c. 2. ^^ See B. xxxiv. c. 47. 



^ " Improba" seems to be used here in much the same sense in which 

 Virgil has said "Labor improbus" — "Unremitting labour." 



'■* He alludes, probably, to eclipses of tkc sun. 



