Page:Philosophical Transactions - Volume 004.djvu/250

 and impregnated it with a known proportion of Gall: then by degrees I let fall into it the Salt of Iron, until I found it thereby as deeply tinged red, as the same quantity of Farrington-waters would be by the same proportion or Gall: The quantity of the Salt of Iron, that performed this, was neat two grains. This water, so tinged, tasted and smelt just as the natural water from the Spring with Gall did: If I added a greater proportion of Salt, it would make it nauseous and Emetical. Sherborn, Decemb. 17. 1669.

Am much obliged to my honored Friend Dr H. for his Analysis of Mineral Springs, and his Animadversions relating to that Argument. I offer no Objection against the Note, that some Waters do lick up the Salts, before they be perfectly fixt in the Materials of Metals: Only this I humbly propose for further Inquiry; Whether some Waters, by their long passage through sub-terraneous steams of divers kinds, and by heats and coolings, and by many changes of these, and by several kinds of strainings, by collisions, and manifold alterations of the contexture of their minute parts may not first acquire some Metallin Tincture; and thence assist the Generation of Perfect Metals, if they meet with fit materials; Or if they should be further concocted, before they be intercepted by opening the Spring? If this may sometimes fall out, then we may in such cases avoid the difficulty of undertaking, that Metals, there continued hundreds of years, are imperfect and in fieri And perhaps the and other Metalline Spirits may be purer and more throu hlythroughly [sic] deopilative, before they be embodied into firm Metals, than after they are by Fire extracted. And then this may he a secret cause, why some Springs proved effectually Medical, when other Medicins do faile.

Learned Varro saith, Tellas Materomnium. And we can easily apprehend, that all solid Bodies, even Gold and firmest