hat which is separated from the
metal in the first furnaces. And of this kind is all clay and argillaceous
earth, such as that which apparently forms a large part of the whole of our
island of Britain: all of which, if subjected very vehemently to intense
heat, exhibits a ferric and metallick body, or passes into ferric vitreous
matter, as can be easily seen in buildings in bricks baked from clay,
which, when placed next the fires in the open kilns (which our folk call
_clamps_)[79] and burned, present an iron vitrification, black at the other
end. Moreover all those earths as prepared are drawn by the magnet, and
like iron are attracted by it. So perpetual and ample is the iron offspring
of the terrestrial globe. Georgius Agricola says that almost all
mountainous regions are full of its ores, while as we know a rich iron lode
is frequently dug in the open country and plains over nearly the whole of
England and Ireland; in no other wise than as, says he, iron is dug out of
the meadows at the town of Saga in pits driven to a two-foot depth. Nor are
the West Indies without their iron lodes, as writers tell us; but the
Spaniards, intent upon gold, neglect the toilsome work of iron-founding,
and do not search for lodes and mines abounding in iron. It is probable
that nature and the globe of the earth are not able to hide, and are
evermore bringing to the light of day, a great mass of inborn matter, and
are not invariably obstructed by the settling of mixtures and
efflorescences at the earth's surface. It is not only in the common mother
(the terrestrial globe) that iron is produced, but sometimes also in the
air from the earth's exhalations, in the highest clouds. It rained iron in
Lucania, the year in which M. Crassus was slain. The tale is told, too,
that a mass of iron, like slag, fell from the air in the Nethorian forest,
near Grina, and they narrate that the mass was many pounds in weight; so
that it could neither be conveyed to that place, on account of its weight,
nor be brought away by cart, the place being without roads. This happened
before the civil war waged between the rival dukes in Saxony. A similar
story, too, comes to us from Avicenna. It once rained iron in the
Torinese[80], in various places (Julius Scaliger telling us that he had a
piece of it in his house), about three years before that province was taken
over by the king. In the year 1510 in the country bordering on the river
Abdua (as Cardan writes[81] i