USES OP OUICKSILVBR, &C. 319 



is great reason to believe that the Dutch impose upon the world a 

 home manufacture, under the name of Japan cinnabar : the trade 

 for gold, copper, and cinnabar, to Japan is exceedingly lucrative, 

 and I believe wholly, as to Europe, in the hands of the Dutch. 



Those who are acquainted with the difficulty of making chemi- 

 cal experiments, will admire the great patience and industry with 

 which Boerhaave investigated the nature of mercury. He was in. 

 duced to undertake this task, from a desire of verifying or refut- 

 ing the doctrines of the alchemists. These adepts had taught, that 

 mercury was the matter of which all metals consisted ; and that if 

 it could be cleansed from some original impurities, with which, 

 even in its virgin state, they held it to be polluted, it would then 

 become fit nutriment for the seed of every metallic substance- for, 

 according to them, every. metal sprung from its peculiar seed, 

 which, when it met with its proper pabulum, in a proper matrix, 

 attended with a due fostering heat, by a vivifying principle multi- 

 plied itself, and received an augmentation of parts, in a manner 

 similar to that by which plants and animals are dilated in their di- 

 mensions. The investigation of nature is infinite ; every age adds 

 somewhat to the common stock, which renders the labours of pre- 

 ceding ages wholly useless. We no longer trouble ourselves with 

 the works of the alchemists which remain, nor do we regret such 

 of them as have been devoured by time, or were burned by the 

 order of Diocletian ; nay, even the Herculean labours of Boer- 

 haave are become less interesting to us, and probably never would 

 have been undertaken by him, had he been aware, that mercury 

 would, in a proper degree of cold, become, like other metals, solid 

 and malleable. In the Transactions of our Royal Society, for the 

 year 1733, we meet with Boerhaave's first dissertation upon mer- 

 cury : his first experiments respect the change which the purest 

 mercury undergoes from continual agitation; he included two 

 ounces, which had been distilled above sixty times, in a clean 

 bottle, and fastening the bottle to the hammer of a fulling mill 

 which was almost constantly going, found in about eight months 

 time above one eighth of the fluid, splendid, insipid mercury. 

 changed into a black powder, of an acrid brassy taste. He next 

 digested mercury in a gentle heat, (180 of Fahrenheit's thermo- 

 meter), and found it, in a few months, changed into a powder, si- 

 milar to what had been produced by agitation : both these pow- 

 ders in a greater degree of heat were revivified, or became run- 



