Description of the Most Principal Mineral Ores

in the fire and smelting, it cannot be smelted for profit well without special damage. But to arrive at the knowledge of the difference of the ores, which are soft-fusible, stubborn, or raw, the experienced and practiced miners of old have given to every type of mine and ore names according to their nature, which are called in miner’s parlance as follows.

Glass Ore

Firstly, these are counted among the soft-fusible silver ores: namely, the Glaßertzt glass ore/silver sulfide, as the most excellent, which is a solid lead-colored ore, almost to be compared in quality to native silver. It does not lose much more than one-sixth part in the fire, the rest is good pure silver, and one holds that, outside of native silver, for the best silver ore.

White noble ore.

Horn ore.

Thereafter, one finds weiß güldig ertzt white noble ore, not that it holds gold, but that it is worthy and good, that is what it is called according to its quality. Likewise Horn ertzt horn ore/cerargyrite, that is transparent like a horn, and both are very rich in silver.

Red noble ore.

Next to the glass ore is a silver ore that is brownish-red, almost like cinnabar, yet not so light; that is called roth güldig Ertzt red noble ore, which also gives over half a part of good silver. One also finds very often that these ores break into one another and are not easily to be distinguished.

Black ore.

The ores that break black, gray, and are heavy, they are also sometimes very rich in silver.

Mulm.

But the black light Mulm powdery ore, and the brown and yellow mulm, are not always rich, but it happens many times that they hold nothing at all.

Yellowish and iron-shot ores.

All yellowish, brown, and iron-shot, weathered mine-types, or those in the mountains that have been burnt through by the cold weather-fire, these hold in part silver, in part none, and they are by themselves, without other disseminated ore or that which sometimes stands therein, rarely rich in silver.

Lead-tailed and iron-pyritic ores.

As also the lead-tailed iron-pyritic original: "genstkötichten" ores are sometimes rich, sometimes very poor in silver. All hornstone-like ores, be they yellow, white, gray, black, brown, red, or green, they hold by themselves without other rich ores, where they are not found mixed therein, not much silver, and for the most part, nothing at all.

Galena and lead ore.

Thereafter, all lead ores are also counted among the soft-fusible ores, be they galena, gray, brown, or white, which by themselves do not hold much silver; only the small-speiss galena in Bohemia and the coarse-speiss galena at Freiberg in Meissen, they hold in part from twelve to twenty-something loth a unit of weight, half an ounce...