On the Division of Chymistry. 9

we shall not dwell upon, since one and the other pertain to fluid and fixed salts.

Salt is a part of a body resulting from spirituous and more subtle fixed particles. Here, on account of the mere points and the minimum edge of the fixed particles cutting and stinging, they are reckoned with those retained and fixed by earth. It comes into the field in the following way: where bodies are subjected to more vehement motion with the vessel open or exposed to the free air, they are urged by the most vehement motion of the flame. After all the lighter and fluid particles are put to flight, only the earthly ones remain, to which the minimum saline points remain implicitly attached. These, bound by those restraints and fetters, could not attempt flight, whence afterwards, by means of common water, they are freed from the company of the earth. This solution, when evaporated, comes under the name of fixed salt or alkali a caustic basic salt, which is properly the saline principle to chemists. The other salts are either muriatic or spirituous, such as volatile salt, which we have recounted under the name of volatile saline spirit; but muriatic salts are also given in twofold form, either artificial or natural. The artificial is something composed of acid fluid salt and fixed alkaline salt; from this mixture, it seems, even natural muriatic salts depend, as we shall explain later in the case of common salt.

Whether the Vegetative Salt is a menstruum a solvent, and serves other phenomena of nature, is affirmed to us.