316 USES OF gUICKSILVER, &C. 



to the Romans*. Quicksilver will not uuite with iron, yet by an 

 easy operation, iron may be gilded in the same way that copper or 

 silver may. The iron is first to be made bright, and then immers- 

 ed in a solution of blue vitriol, its surface will thereby become 

 covered with a thin coat of copper, and it will then admit the gild, 

 ing as if its whole substance was copper. 



It is this property which quicksilver has of uniting itself with 

 gold, and it does the same with silver, which has rendered it of 

 such great use to the Spaniards in America. They reduce the 

 earths or stones, containing gold or silver in their metallic states, 

 into a very fine powder ; they mix this powder with quicksilver ; 

 and the quicksilver, having the quality of uniting itself with 

 every particle of these precious metals, but being incapable of con. 

 tiacting any union with any particle of earth, extracts these me. 

 tals from the largest portions of earth. The quicksilver, which 

 has absorbed either gold, or silver, or a mixture of both, is se- 

 parated from the substance it has absorbed by evaporation ; the 

 quicksilver flies off in vapour, and the substance remains in the 

 vessel used in the operation. We have no mines of mercury in 

 England ; Sir John Pettus, indeed, says, that a little cinnabar is 

 now and then met with in our copper mines ; and Mr. Pennant 

 observes, that quicksilver has been found in its native state on the 

 mountains of Scotland ; and I have been shewn a piece of clay, 

 said to have been dug near Berwick, in which there were some 

 mercurial globules : but there are no works at present, where 

 mercury is procured in any part of Great Britain ; nor are there 

 many mines of mercury in any part of the world. In the Philoso. 

 phical Transactions for 1665, we have an account of the quicksil. 

 ver mines of Idria, a town situated iu the country anciently called 

 Forum Julii, now Padria de Friouli, subject to the regency, and 

 included in the circles of the lower Austria, in Germany. These 

 mines have been constantly wrought for above 280 years, and are 

 thought, one year with another, to yield above one hundred tons of 

 quicksilver. In Hungary also, there are mines which yield quick, 

 silver, but not so copiously now as formerly. Alonso Barba men. 



JEs inaurari argento vivo, aut certe hydrargyro, legititum erat. Plin. Hist. 

 Nat. XXXIII. Pliny understood by argentum vivnm, native quicksilver, 

 which is found in a fluid state in many mines ; and by hydrargyrum he under- 

 stood quicksilver separated from its ore by fire ; they are the same substance. 



