The Prosperity of Germany, Part Two

Concerning Zinc, which the Belgians call Speauter.

Zinckum zinc is a fleeting and volatile mineral, or semi-mature metal, after it has been cooked out of its vein. Although it excels tin in beauty and whiteness, it yields to it in ductility and flow, and is for the most part added to it to make it more beautiful and harder. Among us Germans, it is infrequent, and a not inconsiderable quantity is brought to us by merchants every year from the East Indies. In what way it is to be treated so that it may become a healthy medicine, will be known from the first part of my furnaces described heretofore. It is a gold-bearing but immature mineral, which, like lapis calaminaris calamine stone, tinges copper with a yellow color and changes it into Orichalcum brass; and for that reason, it can be called nothing other than a fluid Lapis Calaminaris, and this one, lacking flow, can be called Zinckum, because both are partakers of one and a common nature. It happens for the most part, however, that where it is mined, lead also offers itself in association; and for that reason, zinc mixed with lead is found less suitable for preparing brass, and the necessity of lead requires a separation from the zinc. The Gossaria Goslar vein, containing four times more zinc than lead, is called a lead vein and mine rather, and the zinc itself is burned off so that only the lead can be had, which possesses some silver attached to it. In the very smelting, while the lead is fused, the zinc, being a fleeting and combustible mineral, rises in its own way by smoking gradually and adheres to the walls of the furnace, and is often knocked down by the smelters lest it multiply by accumulating and obstruct the furnace or make it narrower. The zinc that is knocked down and struck off they call lapis calaminaris, and with it they augment copper and change it into brass. The ignorance of this mineral therefore causes a huge force and quantity of it to perish every year by being burned and reduced to nothing, of which the smelters sometimes preserve some piece that is most beautiful to the sight. The mineral itself, however, could be smelted with far greater profit and emolument if it were not burned in the said manner.