1 66 Mayow 



presently be precipitated with fetid odour. For 

 although already in the slaking of the lime the 

 alHaline salt of the lime has united with its acid, not 

 without effervescence and a quite notable heat, yet it 

 will nevetheless immediately desert the acid betrothed 

 to it to be married in closer wedlock with the vitriolic 

 acid, by which however its powers are so completely 

 overcome that the alkaline salt of the lime combined 

 with the vitriolic acid is no longer able as before to 

 dissolve sulphur ; but that a fixed salt is combined 

 with an acid salt in the water in which quicklime has 

 been slaked, and further that the heat of that water is 

 caused by the union of contrary salts, will be made 

 still clearer by what is to be said below. 



Since the contrary salts in the water in which 

 quicklime has been slaked are but little fit for entering 

 into a very close union and for mutually destroying 

 each others powers, each of them consequently can 

 perform the operations appropriate to its own nature. 

 And this is seen clearly in sal armoniac, in which the 

 acid salt is combined with a volatile salt, and yet that 

 acid salt is not so completely subdued by its unequal 

 adversary, the volatile salt united with it, as to be 

 unable to dissolve iron as acids do and to change it 

 into vitriol. Yet if any fixed salt contends with the 

 acid armoniac salt, then indeed its strength is com- 

 pletely destroyed so that it is quite incapable of dis- 

 solving iron any longer. And the case in fact seems 

 to be similar in water of quicklime, for here the less 

 opposing salts do not so completely destroy each 

 other but that either of them can act according to its 

 nature. For the fixed salt of that water is able to 

 dissolve sulphur, and its acid salt can fix and destroy 

 volatile salts, as was said above. 



With respect to water which has slaked quicklime, 



