6i4 



APPENDIX B. 



The book is diffuse and confused, and without arrangement or system, yet a little 

 consideration enables one of experience to understand most statements. There are over 120 

 recipes, with, as said before, much repetition ; for instance, the parting of gold and silver 

 by use of sulphur is given eight times in different places. The final line of the book is : " Take 

 this in good part, dear reader, after it, please God, there will be a better." In truth, however, 

 there are books on assaying four centuries younger that are worse. This is, without doubt, 

 the first written word on assaying, and it displays that art already full grown, so far as con- 

 cerns gold and silver, and to some extent copper and lead ; for if we eliminate the words 

 dependent on the atomic theory from modern works on dry assaying, there has been but very 

 minor progress. The art could not, however, have reached this advanced stage but by slow 

 accretion, and no doubt this collection of recipes had been handed from father to son long 

 before the i6th century. It is of wider interest that these booklets represent the first milestone 

 on the road to quantitative analysis, and in this light they have been largely ignored by the 

 historians of chemistry. Internal evidence in Book VII. of De Re Metallica, together with 

 the reference in the Preface, leave little doubt that Agricola was familiar with these book- 

 lets. His work, however, is arranged more systematically, each operation stated more clearly, 

 with more detail and fresh items ; and further, he gives methods of determining copper and 

 lead which are but minutely touched upon in the Probierbuchlein, while the directions as to tin, 

 bismuth, quicksilver, and iron are entirely new. 



Biringuccio (Vanuccio). We practically know nothing about this author. From the 

 preface to the first edition of his work it appears he was styled a mathematician, but in the 

 text^^ he certainly states that he was most of his time engaged in metallurgical operations, 

 and that in pursuit of such knowledge he had visited Germany. The work was in Italian, 

 published at Venice in 1540, the title page of the first edition as below : — 



DE LA PIRO^ 



TECHNIA. 



LIBR.I.X.DOVE AMPIAMEN 

 te n cratca non folo di ogni forte 86 di, 

 uerHta di Miniere, ma anchora quan 

 to/1 ricerca intornoala pratcicadi 

 quelle cofe di quel che fi appartiene 

 a I'arte de la fufione ouer gitto de me 

 callicome d^ogni alcra cofa iimile a 

 qucida* Gompofti peril, S.Vanoc^ 

 cio Biringuccio Sennefe. 



Con Priuilegio Apoftolico 8t dela 

 CefareaMacnia SCdel lllu(tnfs.5ena 

 toVeneto 



^J^ 



'^.SJ^ 



^*Book I., Chap. 2. 



