Page:The Sceptical Chymist.djvu/83

 whence some Goldsmiths of my Acquaintance make a Benefit by grinding such Crucibles to powder, to recover out of them the latent particles of Silver. And hence I might argue, that perhaps Claveus was mistaken, and imagin’d that Silver to have been driven away by the Fire, that indeed lay in minute parts hid in his Crucible, in whose pores so small a quantity as he mist of so ponderous a Bodie might very well lie conceal’d.

But Secondly, admitting that some parts of the Silver were driven away by the violence of the Fire, what proof is there that it was either the Salt, the Sulphur, or the Mercury of the Metal, and not rather a part of it homogeneous to what remain’d? For besides, that the Silver that was left seem’d not sensibly alter’d, which probably would have appear’d, had so much of any one of its Principles been separated from it; We finde in other Mineral Bodies of a less permanent nature than Silver, that the Fire may divide them into such minute parts, as to be able to carry them away with its self, without at all destroying their Nature. Thus we see that in the