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ous beds where metals and fossils are perpetually forming, 

 which renders yet more remarkable the ignorance of some 

 of the reformed alchemists, who imagined they could attain 

 their object by the equable heat of lamps, or the like, burn 

 ing uniformly. Let this suffice concerning the operation 

 and effects of heat; nor is it time for us to investigate them 

 thoroughly before the forms and conformations of bodies 

 have been further examined and brought to light. When 

 we have determined upon our models, we may seek, apply, 

 and arrange our instruments. 



4. The fourth mode of action is by continuance, the very 

 steward and almoner, as it were, of nature. We apply the 

 term continuance to the abandonment of a body to itself for 

 an observable time, guarded and protected in the meanwhile 

 from all external force. For the internal motion then com 

 mences to betray and exert itself when the external and 

 adventitious is removed. The effects of time, however, are 

 far more delicate than those of fire. Wine, for instance, 

 cannot be clarified by fire as it is by continuance. Nor are 

 the ashes produced by combustion so fine as the particles 

 dissolved or wasted by the lapse of ages. The incorpora 

 tions and mixtures, which are hurried by fire, are very 

 inferior to those obtained by continuance; and the various 

 conformations assumed by bodies left to themselves, such 

 as mouldiness, etc., are put a stop to by fire or a strong 

 heat. It is not, in the meantime, unimportant to remark 

 that there is a certain degree of violence in the motion of 

 bodies entirely confined; for the confinement impedes the 

 proper motion of the body. Continuance in an open ves 

 sel, therefore, is useful for separations, and in one hermet 

 ically sealed for mixtures, that in a vessel partly closed, but 

 admitting the air, for putrefaction. But instances of the 



