Page:De re metallica (1912).djvu/91

Rh

accumulations is usually formed a "vena cumulata." As to those that are found in underground canales which do not appear to have been derived from the earth or rock adjoining, these have undoubtedly been carried by the water for a greater distance from their place of origin; which may be made clear to anyone who seeks their source." On the origin of solidified juices he states (De Ortu, p. 43): "I will now speak of solidified juices (sued concreti). I give this name to those minerals which are without difficulty resolved into liquids (humore). Some stones and metals, even though they are themselves composed of juices, have been compressed so solidly by the cold that they can only be dissolved with difficulty or not at all. . . . For juices, as I said above, are either made when dry substances immersed in moisture are cooked by heat, or else they are made when water flows over ’earth,’ or when the surrounding moisture corrodes metallic material; or else they are forced out of the ground by the power of heat alone. Therefore, solidified juices originate from liquid juices, which either heat or cold have condensed. But that which heat has dried, fire reduces to dust, and moisture dissolves. Not only does warm or cold water dissolve certain solidified juices, but also humid air; and a juice which the cold has condensed is liquefied by fire and warm water. A salty juice is condensed into salt; a bitter one into soda; an astringent and sharp one into alum or into vitriol. Skilled workmen in a similar way to nature, evaporate water which contains juices of this kind until it is condensed; from salty ones they make salt, from aluminous ones alum, from one which contains vitriol they make vitriol. These workmen imitate nature in condensing liquid juices with heat, but they cannot imitate nature in condensing them by cold. From an astringent juice not only is alum made and vitriol, but also sory, chalcilis, and misy, which appears to be the ’flower’ of vitriol, just as melanteria is of sory. (See note on p. 573 for these minerals.) When humour corrodes pyrites so that it is friable, an astringent juice of this kind is obtained." (De Ortu, p. 50), he states: "It is now necessary to review in a few words what I have said as to all of the material from which stones are made; there is first of all mud; next juice which is solidified by severe cold; then fragments of rock; afterward stone juice (succuslapidescens), which also turns to stone when it comes out into the air; and lastly, everything which has pores capable of receiving a stony juice." As to an "efficient force," he states (p. 54): "But it is now necessary that I should explain my own view, omitting the first and antecedent causes. Thus the