I proceed now to such inanimate Bodies as are called Perfectè mixta, perfectly mixt, improperly enough, they being many of them (for ought I know) as simple as those they call Elements. These are Stones, Metals, Minerals and Salts,
In Stones, which one would think were a neglected Genus, what variety? What beauty and elegancy? What constancy in their temper and consistency, in their Figures and Colours? I shall speak of first some notable Qualities wherewith some of them are endued. Secondly, The remarkable Uses they are of to us. The Qualities I shall instance in are first Colour, which in some of them is most lively, sparkling, and beautiful; the Carbuncle or Rubine shining with red, the Sapphire with blue, the Emerauld with green, the Topaz or Chrysolite of the Ancients with a yellow or gold colour, the Amethyst as it were tinctured with Wine, the Opal varying its colours like changeable Taffaty, as it is diversly exposed to the Light. Secondly, Hardness, wherein some Stones exceed all other bodies, and among them the Adamant all other Stones, being exalted to that degree thereof, that Art in vain endeavors to counterfeit it, the factitious Stones of Chymists in imitation being easily detected by any ordinary Lapidist. Thirdly, Figure, many of them shoot into regular Figures, as Crystal and bastard Diamonds into Hexagonal; others into those that are more elegant and compounded, as those formed in imitation of the Shels of testaceous Fishes of all sorts, Sharks Teeth and Vertebres, &c. If these be originally Stones, or primary Productions of Nature in imitation of Shels and Fishes Bones, and not the Shels and Bones themselves petrified, as we have somtimes thought. Some have a kind of vegetation and resemblance of Plants, as Corals, Pori and Fungites, which grow upon the Rocks like Shrubs: To which I might add our ordinary Star-stones and Trochites, which I look upon as a sort of Rock-Plants.
Secondly, For the Uses; some serve for Building and many sorts of Vessels and Utensils; for Pillars and Statues and other carved works in relieve, for the Temples, ornament of Palaces, Portico’s, Piazzas, Conduits, &c. as Freestone and Marble; some to burn into Lime as Chalk and Limestone: Some with the mixture of Beriglia or Kelp to make Glass, as that the Venetians call Cuogolo, and common Flints which serve also to strike Fire; some to cover Houses as Slates; some for marking as Morochthus, and the forementioned Chalk, which is a […], serving moreover for manuring Land, and some medicinal Uses; some to make Vessels of which will endure the fire; as that found in the Country of Chiavenna near Plurs. To these useful Stones I might add the Warming-stone, digged in Cornwal, which being once well heated at the fire retains its warmth a great while, and hath been found to give ease and relief in several Pains and Diseases, particularly that of the internal Haemorrhoids. I might also take notice that some Stones are endued with an Electrical or attractive Virtue. I might spend much time in the discoursing of the most strange and unaccountable Nature and Powers of the Loadstone, a Subject which hath exercised the Wits and Pens of the most acute and ingenious Philosophers; and yet the Hypotheses which they have invented to give an account of its admirable phoenomena seem to me lame and unsatisfactory. What can we say of the subtlety, activity, and penetrancy of its effluvia, which no obstacle can stop or repel, but they will make their way through all sorts of Bodies, firm and fluid, dense and rare, heavy and light, pellucid and opake: Nay they will pass through a vacuity or empty space, at least devoid of Air and any other sensible Body. Its attractive power of Iron was known to the Ancients, its verticity and direction to the Poles of the Earth is of later Invention: Which of how infinite advantage it hath been to these two or three last Ages, the great improvement of Navigation and advancement of Trade and Commerce by rendring the remotest Countries easily accessible, the noble Discovery of a vast Continent or new World, besides a multitude of unknown Kingdoms and Islands, the resolving experimentally those ancient Problems of the Spherical roundness of the Earth; of the Being of Antipodes, of the Habitableness of the Torrid Zone, and the rendring the whole Terraqueous Globe circumnavigable, do abundantly demonstrate; whereas formerly they were wont to coast it, and creep along the Shores, scarce daring to venture out of the Ken of Land, when they did having no other guide but the Cynosura or Pole-star and those near it, and in cloudy weather none at all.
As for Metals, they are so many ways useful to Mankind, and those Uses so well known to all, that it would be lost labor to say any thing of them: Only it is remarkable, that those which are of most frequent and necessary use, as Iron, Brass and Lead, are the most common and plentiful: Others that are more rare, may better be spared, yet are they thereby qualified to be made the common measure and standard of the value of all other Commodities, and so to serve for Coin or Money, to which use they have been employed by all civil Nations in all Ages. Of these Gold is remarkable for its admirable Ductility and Ponderosity, wherein it excels all other bodies hitherto known. I shall only add concerning Metals, that they do pertinaciously resist all Transmutation; and though one would sometimes think they were turned into a different Substance, yet do they but as it were lurk under a Larva or Vizzard, and may be reduced again into their natural Form and Complexions, in despight of all the tortures of Vulcan or corrosive Waters. Note, That this was written above Thirty Years since, when I thought I had reason to distrust what ever had then been reported or written to affirm the Transmutation of Metals one into another.
I shall omit the consideration of other Minerals, and of Salts and Earths, because I have nothing to say of their Uses, but only such as refer to Man, which I cannot affirm to have been the sole or primary End of the Formation of them. Indeed to speak in general of these Terrestrial inanimate Bodies, they having no such organization of parts as the Bodies of Animals, nor any so intricate variety of Texture, but that their production may plausibly be accounted for by an Hypothesis of matter divided into minute Particles or Atoms naturally indivisible, of various but a determinate number of Figures, and perhaps also differing in Magnitude, and these moved, and continually kept in motion according to certain established Laws or Rules; we cannot so clearly discover the Uses for which they were Created, but may probably conclude that among other Ends they were made for those for which they serve us and other Animals. It is here to be noted, that according to our Hypothesis, the number of the Atomes of each several kind that is of the same Figure and Magnitude is not nearly equal; but there be infinitely more of some species than of others, as of those that compound those vast Aggregates of Air, Water, and Earth, more abundantly than of such as make up Metals and Minerals: The reason whereof may probably be, because those are necessary to the Life and Being of Man and all other Animals, and therefore must be always at hand; these only useful to Man, and serving rather his Conveniences than Necessities. The reason why I affirm the minute component Particles of Bodies to be naturally indivisible by any Agent we can employ, even Fire it self (which is the only Catholick Dissolvent, other menstruums being rather Instruments than Efficients in all Solutions, apt by reason of the figure and smalness of their Parts to cut and divide other Bodies, (as Wedges cleave Wood) when actuated by fire or its heat, which else would have no efficacy at all; as Wedges have not unless driven by a Beetle:) the reason, I say, I have already given; I shall now instance in a Body whose minute Parts appear to be indissoluble by the force of Fire, and that is common Water, which destill, boil, circulate, work upon how you will by Fire, you can only dissolve it into Vapour, which when the motion ceases easily returns into Water again; Vapour being nothing else but the minute Parts thereof by heat agitated and separated one from another. For another Instance, some of the most Learned and experienced Chymists do affirm Quicksilver to be intransmutable, and therefore call it Liquor aeternus. And I am of opinion that the same holds of all simple Bodies, that their component Particles are indissoluble, by any natural Agent.