that Factitious Concrete, which the Chymists call Mercurius dulcis; not because it is sweet, but because the sharpness of the Corrosive Salts is so taken away by their Combination with the Mercurial Corpuscles, that the whole mixture when it is prepar’d is judg’d to be insipid.
And thus (continues Carneades) having given you some Reasons why I refuse to admit Elementary water for a constant Ingredient of Mixt Bodies, It will be easie for me to give you an Account why I also reject Earth.
For first, it may well be suspected that many Substances pass among Chymists under the name of Earth, because, like it, they are Dry, and Heavy, and Fixt, which yet are very farr from an Elementary Nature. This you will not think improbable, If you recall to mind what I formerly told you concerning what Chymists call the Dead Earth of things, and especially touching the copper to be drawn from the Caput Mortuum of Vitriol; And if also you allow me to subjoyn a casual but memorable Experiment made by Johannes Agricola upon the Terra Damnata of Brimstone. Our Author then tells us (in his notes upon Popius,) that in the year 1621 he made an Oyle of Sulphur; the remaining Fæces he reverberated in a moderate Fire fourteen dayes; afterwards he put them well luted up in a Wind Oven, and gave them a strong Fire for six hours, purposing to calcine the Fæces to a perfect Whiteness, that he might make someting else out of them. But coming to break the pot, he found above but very little Fæces, and those Grey and not White; but beneath there lay a fine Red Regulus which he first marvell’d at and knew not what to make of, being well assured that not the least thing, besides the Fæces of the Sulphur, came into the pot; and that the Sulphur it self had only been dissolv’d in Linseed Oyle; this Regulus he found heavy and malleable almost as Lead; having caus’d a Goldsmith to draw him a Wire of it, he found it to be of the Fairest copper, and so rightly colour’d, that a Jew of Prague offer’d him a great price for it. And of this Metal he sayes he had