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CHAP. X. Of Minerals and their Chymical Preparation.
WE are at last arrived to the last Chapter of our Chymical Treatise, which will contain the man∣ner of working, which our Artist is to follow as a Model and Example in any operation he will un∣dertake upon any part of the Minerals Family, the proper part and task as some are of opinion, of Chymistry. Fow although we have shewed how many noble Remedies this Art may extract from Animals and Vegetables, yet all that seems but a play in re∣spect of the operations which must be performed, to open and disunite what Nature hath so strongly bound, and as it were fixed in the substances whereof Minerals do consist and are composed. All this will better appear when we come to speak of it particu∣larly: for though in the Theorical part of this Treatise we have al∣ready spoken of their generation, yet it is necessary that we should make a subdivision of this ample and numerous Head, and declare the Subalternate genders it contains, as also the Species whereof they consist; and that also we make a description of their original, assign their definitions, and declare their constitutive parts, that thereby the truth and noblenesse of Substances may better be con∣ceived, as also the difficulty of their Works, which must needs a∣stonish and confound those that pretend to the Name and Title of Naturalists or searchers of Nature, and yet are ignorant of the most part of her noblest and choisest actions: For what could she produce more perfect, and lesse corruptible then Gold, more white then Pearls, more resplendent and shining then Ruby and Dia∣mont, more wonderful then the Loadstone, and more capable of surprizing and puzling the Judgement and Learning of these con∣ceited and unexperienced Philosophers, then all the substances whereof this family of Minerals is composed? But that which is