The First Part.

To what may be deduc’d, in favour of this Assertion, from the Nature of the Thing it self, I will add something out of Experience, which though I have not known it used to such a purpose, seems to me more fairly to make out that there May be Elementary Bodies, then the more questionable Experiments of Peripateticks and Chymists prove that there Are such. I consider then that Gold will mix and be colliquated not only with Silver, Copper, Tin and Lead, but with Antimony, Regulus Martis and many other Minerals, with which it will compose Bodies very differing both from Gold, and the other Ingredients of the resulting Concretes. And the same Gold will also by common Aqua Regis, and (I speak it knowingly) by divers other Menstruums be reduc’d into a seeming Liquor, in so much that the Corpuscles of Gold will, with those of the Menstruum, pass through Cap-Paper, and with them also coagulate into a Crystalline Salt. And I have further try’d, that with a small quantity of a certain Saline Substance I prepar’d, I can easily enough sublime Gold into the form of red Crystalls of a considerable length; and many other wayes may Gold be disguis’d, and help to constitute Bodies of very differing Natures both from It and from one another, and neverthelesse be afterward reduc’d to the self-same Numerical, Yellow, Fixt, Ponderous and Malleable Gold it was before its commixture. Nor is it only the fixedst of Metals, but the most fugitive, that I may employ in favour of our Proposition: for Quicksilver will with divers Metals compose an Amalgam, with divers Menstruums it seems to be turn’d into a Liquor, with Aqua fortis will be brought into either a red or white Powder or precipitate, with Oyl of Vitriol into a pale Yellow one, with Sulphur it will compose a blood-red and volatile Cinaber, with some Saline Bodies it will ascend in form of a Salt which will be dissoluble in water; with Regulus of Antimony and Silver I have seen it sublim’d into a kinde of Crystals, with another Mixture I reduc’d it into a malleable Body, into a hard and brittle Substance by another: And some there are who affirm, that by proper Additaments they can reduce Quicksilver into Oyl, nay into Glass, to mention no more. And yet out of all these