Complete Works, Vol. V

For in the same way, it happens that the mineral power, along with the vaporous matter of the stone, is drawn by the water, and the whole water is infected with such a spirit and vapor; and when it can overcome the water, it converts it into stone. It converts the more earthy things more quickly, however, such as wood, plants, bodies of animals, or anything of this kind; because this immersed water is apprehended by such a power and drawn to the earthy nature of the stone’s matter, which the mineral power—diffused vaporously in the water—dries, coagulates, and brings to form.

In the highest mountains, the cold is perpetual and excellent, the cause of which has been revealed in the book of Meteororum Meteorology. This cold, by expressing the moisture, apprehends the water frozen from snows and induces in it the properties of the dry, as is the nature of excellent coldness; and from that dry [state], it coagulates the ice into crystal or another transparent stone. And by this method, it is sufficiently plain to know the places of the generation of stones, and the suitability and difference of the same.

CHAPTER IX.

There remains, however, something that declares the understanding of all those things which have been said. And this is that we should determine how the power of one thing apprehends the substance of another and converts it to itself. This is known from those things we have said about the transmutation of elements into one another. For when earth converts water to itself, first the powers of the earth enter the substance and alter it, and as if dominating the water, they hold it; and then the water begins to stand and be terminated, and yet it does not lose its transparency, and then afterward

it is corrupted and passes into earth, and it receives the qualities of the earth, which are opaque and dry. It is similarly so regarding other elements transmuted to others. For it is entirely similar regarding the powers of mixtures, as is evident in the juice of plants and the food of animals. In these, the powers of the animated [entities] first alter, and afterward hold the matter as if apprehended, and then convert it into a part of the body that is nourished.

And in every same way, it is regarding the lapidificativa stone-making power when it is diffused in some place, whether it be water or earth: it first alters the matter it touches, and afterward, dominating it, it holds it, and after it has held and overcome it, it converts it into stone. This operation occurs in three ways in general, although in number its modes are infinite. One of which is that the power apprehending the matter alters it only according to the active and passive qualities by which it operates in it, and this is a weak power. In the second way, it happens that it alters it both according to qualities and also according to the proximate effects of those qualities, which are hardness and softness, such that transparency, opacity, and the matter are not removed; and this is a stronger power, and in this way, transparent stones are generated. In the third way, it happens that it apprehends the entire matter, both according to proximate effects and also according to the consequent ones; and then it induces qualities and hardness and softness, and changes the proper color of that matter. And in this way also, sometimes non-transparent stones, or those not fully transparent, are generated from water, such as the calcedonius chalcedony and that which is called the lapis buffonis toadstone, and certain other stones. There are many degrees in all these ways, of which mention will be made later when we deal with precious stones.

An example of this is that sometimes the earthy force, which operates by the cold compressing the moist and by the dry, operates in water such that only the power of this kind of cold and the power of this kind of dry remains in it.