Germany's Prosperity

work not much is lost, and the loss can always be replaced by common salt. You will not find a closer way to draw both the volatile and the fixed ☉ gold and ☽ silver out of the earth and to make them useful as easily as I have prescribed for you here. Regarding these ores that are rich enough and can pay the smelting costs, leave them lying; and those who do not know better, let them smelt them. You gather the washed-away silt and slag and extract your part as well, which no one will forbid you. But if you can have golden earths, it is all the better.

NB. It is indeed possible for ☽ and also ☉ to be precipitated from the Extractionibus extractions by the ☿ mercury, but it is more burdensome work than through the ☽ silver or ♄ lead; for the ☿ is not as easily used again or made good as the silver or lead are in this work.

NB. One could also well separate the extracted ☉ and ☽ from the ▽ water without precipitation if one wanted to abstract the ▽ from the ☽ or the ℞ aqua regia from the ☉. But what great trouble this would be; and even if one did not count the trouble, one would still not obtain half as much fixed metal as in this way, for the ☽ and ☉ retain a part of the ▽ or ℞ with them, which sharpness is contrary to all flows and makes not only the still-volatile ☉ and ☽, but also the fixed part in smelting, go away