For the extraction of Gold, Salt is to be dissolved in _Aqua Fortis_,
and for the extraction of Silver, you must dissolve Salt-peter in _Aqua
Fortis_. With these Waters, of which you may furnish your self with
plenty without any great labour, moisten the Oars and then distill them
off again from the said Oars, and they will be always fit for such like
Operations, insomuch that you need never to make new Waters. Nay more,
in all the several Operations and Extractions of the Oars, they will
be more and more augmented, so that if thou usest but at first no more
than two pounds of the same Waters, they may suffice thee for infinite
extractions.
_N. B._ By this means, all the Gold, how little soever, may be
extracted by thee out of all Flints, Sand, and other Minerals without
any expences, the Fire onely excepted.
This also is expedient for me here to show, that sometimes there are
to be found fugacious Minera’s of Gold, and coloured Flints which are
sufficiently rich with Gold, and are painted as ’twere with delicate
colours, _viz._ green, sky-colour, and red: but in the heating them
red hot, those colours vanish, and leave the Flints white. Such as
these admit not of heating red hot, like as others do, which retain
their colours in a red hot Fire. Therefore such must be reduced into
Powder without any previous heating red hot, and you must extract them
[as they are] that so the volatile Gold may be attracted by the _Aqua
Regis_, which said Gold being abstracted [again] by the Ashes of Lead
commits it self to [or imbibes it self in] the said Ashes, which are to
be reduced by the help of the secret Crucible; in which Reduction, the
Gold becomes corporeal and admits of being separated from the Lead with
profit.
_N. B._ Such Stones may likewise be mixed with the sharp coagulated
Spirits, and these [Spirits] may be forced over by a Retort: For so,
the fugitive Spirits of the Salts carry over with them the Volatile
Gold, and make a very excellent Gradatory-water, transmuting fugitive
Mercury into Gold, with greater profit, than if this very volatile Gold
had been made Corporeal with Lead.
This secret is none of the least of those which teach the Extraction of
Gold out of colour’d Flints or Stones.
Such a volatile Gold may also pass into other Metals by gentle
Cementations, and so become fix, and will bring no small profit, nay
rather a greater benefit than if it were gotten out by fusion. In such
Cementations, the volatile Gold hath time of getting a body with the
other Metals, and of acquiring a fixity, and is as it were a golden
Seed, which augments it self into Gold, in, or out of the Metallick
Earth.