182 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [anNO 1685. 



foul or spotted they cleanse, by throwing it into the fire for an hour's time, 

 whence it comes out unhurt, as white as snow. Which very method, as Stra^ 

 describes it, seems also to have been used in ordering the Cretan amianthus; 

 with this addition, that after it was pounded, and the earthy part shook, from 

 the woolly, he says it was combed, and so also says Agricola, which argues there 

 w.as some of a greater length than any I have yet seen; what the Cretan might 

 be I cannot tell, but the Cyprian I am sure is short enough, as also the Welch, 

 and so was all that was known in Pliny's time, who confesses that it was very 

 difficult to weave, by reason of its shortness. 



As to its uses, Pliny informs us, that shrouds of this linen were anciently 

 used at the royal obsequies of kings, to wrap up their corpses in, so as that the 

 ashes of their bodies might be preserved distinct from those of the wood which 

 made the funeral pile, and the letter acquaints us that the princes of Tartary 

 use it at this day for burning their dead; and though it must be acknowledged 

 it diminishes every time it undergoes the violence of the fire, yet this hinders 

 not but it may do that service several times before it be rendered quite useless. 

 Caelius Calcagnanus says, that some of the ancients made themselves cloth of 

 it; with whom Turnebus agrees in his Commentary on Varro; and Caelius 

 Rhodiginus relates that the Indians made garments of it; but Hierocles restrains 

 it to the brachmans only. Marco Antonio Castagna, who found this mineral 

 somewhere in Italy, knows how to prepare and render it so tractable and soft, 

 that it resembles well enough a very fine lamb's skin, which he can make thick 

 or thin to what degree he pleases, and so to resemble either a very white skin 

 or a very white paper. We have also made paper of the Welch amianthus lately 

 here at Oxford, which will bear both fire and ink well enough, the ink only 

 turning red by the violence of the fire. 



Lastly, to show the reason whence it is, that this substance should be so 

 strangely privileged by nature, as to be wholly put out of the power of fire, we 

 must consider that the qualities and power of fire, according to Aristotle, are 

 to separate things of a different, and unite those of a like nature; whence the 

 subjects most apt to take fire, and be dissolved by it, are such heterogeneous 

 bodies, in whose pores the most sulphurous, bituminous, and aqueous particles are 

 lodged, which being seized by the fire are quickly put into motion, dilated, and 

 separated, and being thus made capable of flying away, they are at last consumed, 

 and the frame of those bodies are dissolved, whose parts before were united by 

 them. When these are gone, the fire naturally goes out, as having nothing 

 now left to work upon, nothing remaining but the salts and earth in the form 

 of ashes; which in all compounds are the things that resist this element most, 

 and will remain after the most exalted operation it can be forced to. Nor do 



