VOL. VI.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 02f 



as hard as before, but milk white and half opaque, resembling a natural 

 while agate ; but the rover, and the upper parts of the crucible, that were un- 

 filled, and could not be touched by the jasper in the melting, were tinged with 

 the natural colour of the jasper ; insomuch that if there had been the hardness 

 of a jasper, and the colour not superficial only, the fragments of the crucible 

 might have been sold for the best and most polished jasper, having here and 

 there greenish streaks and specks, the rest being red and yellowish ; all so 

 beautiful, that a good painter would scarcely have been able to imitate those 

 various colours. The author says, he keeps still the pieces in his laboratory at 

 Mimchen in Bavaria, as a very extraordinary treasure ; esteeming that those 

 upper parts were tinged by the anima of the jasper, driven up by the force 

 of the fire from its inferior part, and adhering to the body of the cru- 

 cible. 



We shall farther notice that chemical experiment which gives the title to 

 the book, and is called new, alleged to prove the real and sudden generation 

 and transmutation of metals. He took common brick earth, dried it in the 

 air that it might be sifted ; then poured so much linseed oil upon it as that he 

 might roll it into little balls, of the size of the retort's neck, which they were 

 to be put into, to the end, that the distillation being made, he needed not to 

 break his retort for the taking out of the caput mortuum, but might reserve it 

 for other use. That the fire might the more forcibly penetrate those globules, 

 than if the matter were in one mass, he filled the retort with them, and by 

 degrees distilled them with an open fire, during an hour or two. This distilla- 

 tion being finished, he found in the recipient an oil almost like that which 

 he says is improperly called oleum philosophorum ; then the retort being 

 cooled, he took the little balls out of it, which not being found red by so 

 strong a fire, but very black, he suspected that blackness proceeded from the 

 oil, some terrestrial parts of which, being fixed and severed by virtue of the 

 brick earth, might there have assumed a body ; which of what kind it was, 

 was now further to be examined by trial. Having therefore beaten small these 

 black globules, and sifted them, he put them into a dish, and having poured 

 some common water upon it, he stirred it ; then being grown turbid, he gent- 

 ly poured it off, and poured on fresh clear water, still stirring the matter ; 

 which he so often repeated and continued, till the water came clear away, and 

 there remained at the bottom of the dish a ponderous black sediment, which 

 from its weight and sudden subsidence, as also from its dark colour, he sus- 

 pected to be of a metallic, and indeed of an iron nature ; which being dried on 

 paper, upon the application of a loadstone, was thereby attracted in several 

 grains, which by all proofs he found to be very good iron. 



