126 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO l666, 



nobler from the baser metals ? — ^Whether the burning and beating of the ore 

 be used to prepare it for the furnace ? — What flux-powders, and other ways 

 they have to try and examine the goodness of the ore in small quantities ?— 

 Whether, when they work in great, they use to melt the ore with any flux or 

 additaments, or only by the force of the fire, or in any way between both ? 

 — What kind of furnaces they use to melt the ore in ? — ^What kinds of fuel, 

 and what quantities of it, are wont to be employed in the furnace, within the 

 compass of a day or week ? How much is put in at a time ? How often it is re- 

 newed ? and how much ore in a determinate time, as a week or a day, is wont 

 to be reduced to metal ? — Whether the ore be melted by a wind excited by 

 the fire itself, as in wind ovens ? Or by the course of waters ? Or actuated by 

 the blast of bellows ? — ^What contrivance they have to let or take out the metal 

 that is in fusion, and cast it into bars, sows, pigs, &c. — What clay, sand, or 

 mould they let it run or pour it through ? And after what manner they re- 

 frigerate it ? — What are the ways of distinguishing them, and estimating the 

 goodness of the metals ? — ^Whether they do any thing to the metal after it is 

 once brought to fusion, and if need be, melt it over again, to give it a melior- 

 ation ? As when iron is refined and turned into steel ; and what distinct fur- 

 naces and peculiar ways of ordering the metals are employed to effect this im- 

 provement ? — ^Whether in those places where the metal is melted, there be not 

 elevated some corpuscles, that stick to the upper parts of the furnace or build- 

 ing ? And if there be, whether they be barely fuliginous and recrementitious 

 exhalations or at least in part, metalline flowers ? — ^Whether the metal, being 

 brought to fusion, affbrds any recrements ? — ^Whether, after the metal has 

 been once melted, the remaining part of the ore being exposed to the air, will 

 in time be impregnated, or ripened so as to afford more metal ? 



Answers to Queries. By M. Hevelius. N° 19? p- 346. 



The inquiries you proposed to me, I imparted to several of my learned 

 friends : but hitherto I have attained an answer but to few particulars. Among 

 the rest you will find a letter of the learned Johannes Scheffcrus, professor in 

 the Swedish university at Upsal, wherein he discourses handsomely of several 

 things, being ready to entertain a literary commerce with you about such mat- 

 ters. Touching amber I am almost of the same mind with him, that it is a 

 kind of fossil pitch or bitumen ; seeing it is not only found on the shore of the 

 Prussian sea, but also digged up in subterraneous places, some German miles 

 distant from the sea, and that not only in sandy, but also in other hills of 

 firmer earth ; of which I myself have seen pretty big pieces. — Concerning 

 swallows, I have frequently heard fishermen affirm, that they have here often 



