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.
LXX. The manner of exalting Copper into Silver.
Dissolve Silver in a Crucible by the Sal Mirabilis, made of Salt-peter and Oil of Vitriol; in which Solution you shall get a green Salt, fit for the graduating of Copper into Silver, after the same manner as we taught but now of the Gold.
And albeit the Silver augmentation be not so great, yet the possibility of the Art is thence apparent and demonstrateth, that one Metal admits of being converted into another. But yet he that has good skill in handling this labour, will, if he be fraught with good and apt Crucibles, which can hold the Sal Mirabilis and not swallow it up, receive no small benefit by this same Operation. The Scoria which are remaining in this, and the precedent Operation are not to be thrown away, but to be mixed with Litharge, that so being reduced by blast, they may graduate the Lead, and enrich it with no contemptible Portion of Gold and Silver. For great are the Vertues of this Salt in graduations, which the Ancient Philosophers have openly enough hinted at, saying that their Salt augments the redness of the Gold and whiteness of the Silver, and that this is a thing most true, he who shall in a due manner perform the Operation will learn that so it is, by his own Experience.
But least an Errour should be committed and some of your Gold and Silver lost, it is better that a Man exercise himself in making his Experiments in the lesser Metals; and omit the dealing with Gold and Silver so long till these lesser Metals make him a sufficiently experienced Master for the dealing with the greater.