Chap. CO.] REMEDIES DERIVED FROM TIKE. 383 



be wholly fused without being pulverized into small frag- 

 ments, 1 ' 7 as wo see done in the process of making: the small 

 checqucrs, 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.) MAUVKLLOUS 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 lire. 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 ine.Ued into copper; by lire 

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

 that gold is purified ; by iire, 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 

 yield one product at the first fusion, another at the second, and 

 another at the third. yj 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 1 power, and, as to 

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

 more than it destroys ! 



CHAP. GO. THREE IlEMEDIKS DERIVED FROM FIUE AND FUOil 



ASHKS. 



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

 pestilences prevail, in consequence of the obscuration 2 of the 

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



97 This is, probably, the moaning of " in gutta* ;" a new reading, which 

 is only found in the LJambcrg MS. 



'* See 11. xxxiv. c. 2. p7 Sec P.. xxxiv. c. 17. 



1 * 4 linprohu" smns to be used here in imu-h the same sense in vrhich 

 Virgil luis paid " hubor improbus" * rnrcniitting lalx.mr." 



3 lie alludes, probably, to eclipses of the sun. 



