from those of the Spirits of Guajacum, &c. and the former not only smells and tastes much less like a vegetable Salt, than like that of Harts-horn, and other Animal Concretes; but in divers other Properties seems more of Kinne to the Family of Animals, than to that of vegetable Salts, as I may elsewhere (God permitting) have an occasion more particularly to declare. I might likewise by some other Examples manifest, That the Chymists, to have dealt clearly, ought to have more explicitly and particularly declar’d by what Degree of Fire, and in what manner of Application of it, they would have us Judge a Division made by the Fire to be a true Analysis into their Principles, and the Productions of it to deserve the name of Elementary Bodies. But it is time that I proceed to mention the particular Reasons that incline me to Doubt, whether the Fire be the true and universal Analyzer of mixt Bodies; of which Reasons what has been already objected may pass for one.
In the next place I observe, That there are some mixt Bodies from which it has not been yet made appear, that any degree of Fire can separate either Salt or Sulphur or Mercury, much less all the Three. The most obvious Instance of this Truth is Gold, which is a Body so fix’d, and wherein the Elementary Ingredients (if it have any) are so firmly united to each other, that we finde not in the operations wherein Gold is expos’d to the Fire, how violent soever, that it does discernably so much as lose of its fixednesse or weight, so far is it from being dissipated into those Principles, whereof one at least is acknowledged to be Fugitive enough; and so justly did the Spagyricall Poet somewhere exclaim,
Cuncta adeo miris illic compagibus harent.
And I must not omit on this occasion to mention to you, Eleutherius, the memorable Experiment that I remember I met with in Gasto ClaveusGasto Claveus Apolog. Argur. & Chrysopera., who, though a Lawyer by Profession, seems to have had no small Curiosity and Experience in