Page:History of the Royal Society.djvu/298

 'oyl to the sides of the Scummer. When the Liquor is brought to this pass, every hundred weight of it containeth about threescore and ten pounds weight of Peter.

'When you find your Liquor thus ready to shoot, you must with great Iron Ladles lade it out of the Copper into a high narrow Tub for that purpose, which the Workmen call their settling Tub; and when the Liquor is grown so cold, that you can endure your finger in it, you shall find the common or cubick Salt begin to gravulate and stick to the sides of the Tub; then at the Tap, placed about half a foot from the bottom, draw off your Liquor into deep wooden Trays, or Brass-pans, and the cooler the place is where you let them stand to shoot in, the better and more plentifully will the Salt-peter be produc'd; but it will be of no good colour till it be refined, but will be part white, part yellow, and some part of it blackish.

'The Salt which sticketh to the sides and bottom of the settling Tub is (as I have said) of the nature of common Salt; and there is scarce any Peter to be found but is accompanied with it, though no doubt some of this is drawn out of the Ashes by the second Liquors: If it be foul, they refine it by it self, and about London sell it at good rates to those that salt Neats Tongues, Bacon, and Collar-Beef; for besides a savory taste, it gives a pleasing red colour to most Flesh that is salted with it. Pliny says, Nitrum obsonia alba & deteriora reddit Olera viridiora, whether Salt-peter doth so, I have not yet tryed.

When the Liquor hath stood two Days and two Nights in the Pans, that part of the Liquor which is Rh