The Prosperity of Germany, Part Two

and metals. In many parts and places of the globe, its greatest quantity is either prepared or dug from the earth, as in Iceland and Italy near those fire-belching mountains, Hekla and Vesuvius. There are also many places in Germany in which sulfur is forced to descend from marcasites by fire placed upon it, through descent into a vessel placed underneath.

These are the principal minerals that have become known to me, and which are accustomed to be sought and used by others. But besides these, there are so many other and so various kinds of fossils and minerals that they cannot all be enumerated and marked with their own names. One kind comprises sulfur and arsenic; another contains cobalt and sulfur mixed; a third hides antimony and sulfur in its belly; infinite others of that kind occur. For this time, the above-mentioned, being the most well-known and most used, will suffice.

What minerals are, and which, among them, the principal marks occupy also the principal place, I have indicated thus far. I shall now also indicate and teach in what way, with the aid of saltpeter and other subjects, they can be fixed, concentrated, and reduced into a metallic body, so that those things elsewhere neglected can, in the future, confer a great deal of emolument upon mortals.

The concentration or condensation of minerals, however, stands thus: Either they are fixed or bound by the work of saltpeter, so that, not yielding so quickly to the fire, they do not pass away into smoke and vanish as combustion, but tolerate the fire and undergo fusion; or they are reduced into a body with the aid of metals so that they may produce utility and emolument, either by adding some augmentation to the metals, which the lapis calaminaris provides to copper; or by purifying, separating, and making them better, as will be proven concerning sulfur, antimony, arsenic, and others. Thus, such minerals, of which a great quantity often lies everywhere without profit, will be able to be used and reclaimed for gain and profit.

As far as concerns the minerals to be fixed and bound by nitre, their fixation will be instituted thus: The mineral and nitre, reduced by pounding into a powder, and conjoined in equal weight, are set on fire or thrown into a heated crucible with an iron spoon, so that by igniting and burning, the part of the combustible and fleeting sulfur in the mineral is consumed, and the mineral itself can afterwards better endure the fire and be more conveniently smelted and cleaned with lead. Concerning which operation, since it has already been treated in the explanation of the Miracle of the World, I do not consider its repetition here to be necessary. Thus cobalt, arsenic, orpiment, zinc, bismuth, and other fleeting minerals can, by combustion with saltpeter, be fixed in some manner and rendered constant, so that afterwards, tolerating the fire, they may bring forth their treasures.