If the weather be not extremely cold, and the Acids have a proper degree of strength, the sand-bath is unnecessary, as the dissolution will succeed very well without it.
Iron dissolved by Acids may be separated therefrom, like all other metallic substances in the same circumstances, either by the action of fire, which carries off the Acid and leaves the Martial Earth, or by the interposition of substances which have a greater affinity than metallic substances have with Acids; that is, by Absorbent Earths and Alkaline Salts. By whatever means you separate Iron from an Acid solvent, it constantly appears, after the separation, in the form of a yellowish red powder; because it is then deprived of most of the phlogiston to which it owed its metalline form; whence it is reasonable to think, that this is the proper colour of Martial earth.
All these precipitates of Iron are true Saffrons of Mars, which, as well as those prepared by calcination, are so much the further removed from the nature of a metal, the more they are deprived of their phlogiston. Thence it comes that they are more or less soluble by Acids, and more or less attracted by the magnet: as no ferruginous earth, perfectly deprived of all inflammable matter, is at all attracted by the magnet, or soluble by Acids.
[CHAP. V.]
Of Tin.
PROCESS I.
To extract Tin from its Ore.
Break your Tin ore into a coarse powder, and by washing carefully separate from it all the heterogeneous matters, and ores of a different kind, that may be mixed therewith. Then dry it, and roast it in a strong degree of fire, till no more Arsenical vapour rise from it. When the ore is roasted, reduce it to a fine powder, and mix it thoroughly with twice its weight of the black flux well dried, a fourth part of its weight of clean iron filings, together with as much borax and pitch; put the mixture into a crucible; over all put Sea-salt to the thickness of four fingers, and cover the crucible close.