The Prosperity of Germany, Part Two

that in carrying it out, some error is very easily committed, and absolutely nothing is obtained, even though no small amount of gold might have been present. For antimony is dissipated from lead only with great difficulty, and it ruptures the catinum cinereum ash cupel or cupella, so that the granum probatorium assay grain retreats into the cupel along with it due to its wildness, renders the examination itself fallacious, and leaves the operator in doubt without a certain indication.

To provide a remedy for this inconvenience, the examination must be instituted in the following manner. When one part of iron and two parts of antimony have been properly melted in a crucible, a little dry salispetræ saltpeter/potassium nitrate, reduced to a fine powder, must be cast upon both, and the crucible must be properly covered, and care taken that they melt together excellently with a very strong flux. All that has been melted must be poured into an iron receptacle smeared with wax, and the regulus must be purged by tapping it free from the cooled scoriae and dross, and joined again with two, three, or four parts of lead of its own weight, so that, with the saltpeter cast into the crucible, the regulus of antimony can be separated from the lead, and the lead can afterwards be separated from the assay grain in an ash crucible. In this way, the lead departing and exiting purely and alone, will offer the sought-after grain in perfect weight, and will render the operator master of his wish.

Although this description places the whole matter before the eyes quite clearly and lucidly, I trust that hardly one in ten will understand it, and for that reason I deem it necessary, proposing the matter in slightly clearer words, to expound the purgation of the regulus to be completed by salispetræ with greater clarity. For this method of examining, there is no need to use a large smelting crucible filled with iron, since one hundred pounds of iron and two hundred of antimony are sufficient for a smaller assay weight. Both must be united in the crucible by a proper melting, and urged with a very fine flux by the injection of saltpeter, so that the regulus may leave the scoriae all the better and more promptly, and be gathered more easily by seeking the bottom, which you will thus wash and purge with the help of lead and saltpeter. This regulus out of iron and antimony