(781)
to be restored again into a streight line; This he illustrates by that substance, call'd Cornu Lunæ, which is nothing else, but Silver, whose texture is changed by the particles of acid Spirits, which is fusible at a Candle, and sequacious, and may be reduced into small leaves, transparent, and somewhat obedient to the Hammer. Farther, having taken notice that Glass is a very brittle body, because the surfaces, according to which its particles touch one another, are exceeding small; he excites Mens curiosity, to labour after a way, whereby the parts of Glass may be comminuted into such small parts, as to touch one another in many points, and that then malleable Glass will not be hard to make: All which he concludeth with examining Dr. Merrets Arguments, produced by him in his Ars Vitraria Englished; desiring that it may be made our, how the different figures of the Salts and Sands can remain unchanged by the violence of the Fire?
Besides, he relateth to have reduced Venice-glass into an Alcohol, and upon pouring hot distilled water upon it, drawn a small quantity of Salt out of it, (not a hundred part of the body of the Glass) of an unlike Figure to the Salt, which entred into the composition.
He examins also, whether common Salt may be changed into Vitriol, Alum, Niter. Some (among whom is Kircher) esteeming that the common Salt, according as 'tis variously tinged by Minerals, is sometimes converted into Niter, sometimes into Alum, sometimes into Vitriol, and yet may be reduced into common Salt again. But our Author finds not this in Laboratory's, but that Niter by a flaming fire degenerateth into an acid liquor; being burnt by coals, into a Lixiviat Salt highly different from the nature of Common Salt; if heated with Sulphur by an intense Fire, blown with Bellows in a close Vessel, into Stone; but hitherto by no art into common Salt, He thinks, Kircher has been deceived by this, that the Spirit of Niter being poured on Salt, maketh Crystals again in the appearance of recover'd Niter: But he saith, than this esculent Salt seems to be Niter but is not. For saith he, that any Niter results thence, is not to be assign'd to the Salt, but the Spirit of Niter, i. e. to the attenuated particles of
