Our fire to ignis ardens,' &c.
770. matires sublyming, sublimation of materials. To 'sublimate' is to render vaporous, to cause matter to pass into a state of vapour by the application of heat. 'Philosophi considerantes eorum materiam, quae est in vase suo, et calorem sentit, evaporatur in speciem fumi, et
ascendit in capite vasis: et vocant sublimationem'; Theatrum Chemicum, 1659, vol. ii. p. 125.
'Subtle. How do you sublime him [mercury]?
Face. With the calce of egg-shells,
White marble, talc.' The Alchemist, ii. 1.
771. amalgaming. To 'amalgamate' is to compound or mix intimately, especially used of mixing quicksilver with other metals. The term is still in use; thus 'an amalgam of tin' means a mixture of tin and quicksilver.
calcening. To 'calcine' is to reduce a metal to an oxide, by the action of heat. What is now called an oxide was formerly called 'a metallic calx'; hence the name. The term is here applied to quicksilver or mercury. For example—'When mercury is heated, and at the same time exposed to atmospheric air, it is found that the volume of the air is diminished, and the weight of the mercury increased, and that it becomes, during the operation, a red crystalline body, which is the binoxide of mercury, formed by the metal combining with the oxygen of the air'; English Cyclopaedia, Div. Arts and Sciences, s. v. Oxygen. 'The alchemists used to keep mercury at a boiling heat for a month or longer in a matrass, or a flask with a tolerably long neck, having free communication with the air. It thus slowly absorbed oxygen, becoming converted into binoxide, and was called by them mercurius precipitatus per se. It is now however generally prepared by calcination from mercuric nitrate'; id., s. v. Mercury.
772. Mercurie crude, crude Mercury. See note to l. 820. See the description of Mercury in Ashmole's Theat. Chem. p. 272. The alchemists pretended that their quicksilver, which they called the Green Lion, was something different from quicksilver as ordinarily found. See treatise on 'The Greene Lyon,' in Ashmole's Theat. Chem. p. 280.
774. Note the accents—'súblyméd Mercúrie.'