But (sayes _Eleutherius_, interrupting him at these Words) if you have
no restraint upon you, I would very gladly before you go any further,
be more particularly inform'd, how you make this Volatile Salt,
because (you know) that such Multitudes of Chymists have by a scarce
imaginable Variety of wayes, attempted in Vain the Volatilization of
the Salt of Tartar, that divers learned _Spagyrists_ speak as if it
were impossible, to make any thing out of Tartar, that shall be
Volatile in a Saline Forme, or as some of them express it, _in forma
sicca_. I am very farr from thinking (answers _Carneades_) that the
Salt I have mention'd is that which _Paracelsus_ and _Helmont_ mean
when they speak of _Sal Tartari Volatile_, and ascribe such great
things to it. For the Salt I speak of falls extreamly short of those
Virtues, not seeming in its Tast, Smel, and other Obvious Qualities,
to differ very much (though something it do differ) from Salt of
Harts-horn, and other Volatile Salts drawn from the Distill'd Parts of
Animals. Nor have I yet made Tryals enough to be sure, that it is a
pure Salt of Tartar without participating any thing at all of the
Nitre, or Antimony. But because it seems more likely to proceed from
the Tartar, than from any of the other Ingredients, and because the
Experiment is in it self not Ignoble, and Luciferous enough (as
shewing a new way to produce a Volatile Salt contrary to Acid Salts
from Bodies that otherwise are Observ'd to yield no such Liquor, but
either only, or chiefly, Acid ones,) I shall, to satisfie you,
acquaint you before any of my other Friends with the way I now use
(for I have formerly us'd some others) to make it.
Take then of good Antimony, Salt-Petre and Tartar, of each an equal
weight, and of Quicklime Halfe the Weight of any one of them; let
these be powder'd and well mingl'd; this done, you must have in
readiness a long neck or Retort of Earth, which must be plac'd in a
Furnace for a naked Fire, and have at the top of it a hole of a
convenient Bigness, at which you may cast in the Mixture, and
presently stop it up again; this Vessel being fitted with a large
Receiver must have Fire made under it, till the bottom of the sides be
red hot, and then you must cast in the above prepar'd Mixture, by
about halfe a spoonfull (more or less) at a time, at the hole made for
that purpose; which being nimbly stopt, the Fumes will pass into the
Receiver and condense there into a Liquor, that being rectifi'd will
be of a pure golden Colour, and carry up that colour to a great
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