PRÆFATIO.

if only it is willing to be content with that which it has. Those very regions which are destitute of wood nevertheless enjoy the divine blessing in abundance. Iceland is an example, and other regions facing the cold North, to which grain and other necessities of life must be brought from other regions. On the contrary, they themselves sell dried haddock asellum haddock/codfish, and thus, although they lack trees, shrubbery, grain, and wine, they do not labor under poverty and are nourished by the divine blessing just as others are. If wood is lacking to them, coal carbones fossiles fossil coal/coal nevertheless is available to them. For the earth there is quite sulfurous, and near Mount Hekla, which is inflamed with perpetual fires and ejects fire, smoke, and ashes, it supplies the inhabitants with a great force of sulfur, which they dig up and sell to our sailors and merchants for the sake of their own sustenance.

Someone might object to me here, since the subject of saltpeter is considered universal and is found in all things, that it is entirely necessary, since Iceland lacks wood entirely, that saltpeter also be found in the haddock. Otherwise, it would have to be said that this salt is not universal, insofar as it cannot be found in one region or another. To settle his doubt: I affirm that saltpeter nitrum nitrate/saltpeter is also in fish, as has just been said above, though not as copiously as it is in other subjects, namely in wood, wine, and grain. In rocks, on the contrary, it is found far more copiously and potently...