THE FIRST PART

in the First Part of the Philosophical furnaces, a better description of which will also be given someday, nothing preventing it; meanwhile, use and enjoy what has been said. Even if you might not be able to perform everything to perfection by chance as described in the aforementioned treatise, do not blush to learn the manual procedures from the experienced (which cannot be described so exactly), lest you thus waste your effort and oil uselessly in the future. Therefore, regarding those stones, know that most of them are found in many places, especially in sandy and mountainous regions, though in one place or another, more and better ones are found; for sand lacking flints is rarely found, and often even the sand itself, however small, is not without gold. They are most conveniently sought on the shores of rivers, where, after the sand has been removed and separated from the flints by the washing of the waters, the most abundant ones are found, which, however, are not so easily distinguished from the outside, like those found clean in the sand, because they are covered with slime. Wherefore, they must be broken with a hammer so that what lies hidden in them may appear, which shines better if they are burned in the fire and extinguished in cold water. For a stone retaining its whiteness after cremation and extinction contains nothing; but one acquiring a redness indicates what is contained within it, and the greater that redness, the better the indication. NB. But this is not to be understood of sandy stones, which also redden in part in the fire, possessing no gold, but of flints from the mutual percussion of which fire is elicited, the purer of which also elicit purer gold. There are also flints from which fire is elicited by percussion, reddening in the fire,