Page:Micrographia - or some physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by magnifying glasses with observations and inquiries thereupon.djvu/99

Rh possible, a sperical or globular form, which propriety and several of the Phænomena that proceed from it, I have more fully explicated in the sixth Observation.

One Experiment, which does very much illustrate my present Explication, and is in it self exceeding pretty, I must not pass by: And that is a way of making small Globules or Balls of Lead, or Tin, as small almost as these of Iron or Steel, and that exceeding easily and quickly, by turning the filings or chips of those Metals also into perfectly round Globules. The way, in short, as I received it from the Learned Physitian Doctor I.G. is this;

Reduce the Metal you would thus shape, into exceeding fine filings, the finer the filings are, the finer will the Balls be: Stratifie these filings with the fine and well dryed powder of quick Lime in a Crucible proportioned to the quantity you intend to make: When you have thus filled your Crucible, by continual stratifications of the filings and powder, so that, as neer as may be, no one of the filings may touch another, place the Crucible in a gradual fire, and by degrees let it be brought to a heat big enough to make all the filings, that are mixt with the quick Lime, to melt, and no more; for if the fire be too hot, many of these filings will joyn and run together; whereas if the heat be proportioned, upon washing the Lime-dust in fair Water, all those small filings of the Metal will subside to the bottom in a most curious powder, consisting all of exactly round Globules, which, if it be very fine, is very excellent to make Hour-glasses of.

Now though quick Lime be the powder that this direction makes choice of, yet I doubt not, but that there may be much more convenient ones found out, one of which I have made tryal of, and found very effectual; and were it not for discovering, by the mentioning of it, another Secret, which I am not free to impart, I should have here inserted it.

Oscovy-glass, or Lapis specularis, is a Body that seems to have as many Curiosities in its Fabrick as any common Mineral I have met with: for first, It is transparent to a great thickness: Next, it is compounded of an infinite number of thin flakes joyned or generated one upon another so close & smooth, as with many hundreds of them to make one smooth and thin Plate of a transparent flexible substance, which with care and diligence may be slit into pieces so exceedingly thin as to be hardly perceivable by the eye, and yet even those, which I have thought the thinnest, I have with a good Microscope found to be made up of many other Plates, yet thinner; and it is probable, that, were our Microscopes Rh