The Prosperity of Germany, Part Two

But it must be attended to diligently here that in the separation of gold and silver, if one wishes to execute it with profit, one mineral should offer help to the other, so that, aided by mutual support, each one may more promptly and abundantly confer what it possesses into the common, a richer booty may be acquired, and labor and expenses may be compensated with a more opulent profit. For example: In testing, I have investigated orpiment or some arsenic, thoroughly endowed with a golden nature, which I would willingly convert to my own emolument by perfecting it. For that reason, I look out for copper for myself, which by its nature answers to gold, such as are indeed met with everywhere. To the same, I add and unite my arsenic by cementing, and both united—lest it be separated in the test, with labor and expenses not compensating the costs—I precipitate into a small regulus, and I clean it alone, and thus I achieve the gold which the arsenic and copper kept enclosed in their innermost parts, so that not all the copper needs to be separated by me. But in order that the precipitation of the regulus may be done with greater profit, I use the following reason. I inquire for antimony of good quality, a partaker of a golden nature, as also iron containing gold (such as antimonies and irons are easy to acquire), and I perform the separation as follows: First, I unite my arsenic, pregnant with fleeting gold, with my auriferous copper if I can have it; I reduce both united into a powder, and I ignite it with an equal weight of saltpeter, so that by the conflagration of the saltpeter, the arsenic may become somewhat more fixed and constant, and be treated more conveniently in the fire. If, however, you are more versed in pyrotechnic labors, sparing your saltpeter, you will melt the copper roasted and burned with arsenic with an equal weight of antimony, and you will obtain a regulus subsiding by itself, without a previous precipitation, which is set aside: the remainder is precipitated into another regulus with common iron, which also has its use, as will follow afterwards. If it should perhaps happen that the regulus does not lower itself to the bottom anymore, a little bit of iron filings collected by filing must be thrown into the mass placed again on the pot and liquefied, by which the regulus may be precipitated and descend to the bottom; then the whole mass must be stirred vigorously with a heated iron hook, properly liquefied, and poured into an iron receptacle.