For the due performing of this, you are to have stone-like melting
Pots, and the best that can be, such as by no means may drink in the
Salt, or let it run through, for that the Solution of the Gold with the
Salt is otherwise wont to hide it self in such Pots as are not strong
enough.
If thou canst not get such, ’tis better for thee to abstain from this
labour, than to lose thy Gold, unless haply thou hast a mind to try the
possibility of the same.
If therefore thou desirest to encrease the _Quinta_, [or small
weight] of thy Gold which thou hast added to thy Salt, with some
Augmentation; put two or three _Quinta_’s of Iron bits or pieces into
a good Crucible, and having put thereto your purple Salt, melt it very
accurately for one half hour, in which time, the Gold will precipitate
it self out of the Salt into the Iron, and graduate some of it by
turning it into Gold. For whilst the purple Salt doth eat upon the
Iron and consume it, it doth together therewithall make some of it
participant of a golden Nature by graduation.
I do not insert this Operation here, to the end that by the help
thereof a Man should think of getting Masses of Gold, no; for the sole
end of my proposing it was this, that I might confirm the possibility
of the thing by ocular Demonstration.
Now as here the Iron is graduated by the help of the Gold or golden
Ferment, into Gold; so likewise may Copper be graduated and exalted
into pure Silver; by the application of a silvery Ferment, as followeth.