m of Elian mares._

But what the Chemists (as Geber, and others) call fixed earthy sulphur in
iron is nothing else than the homogenic earth-substance concreted by its
own humour, amalgamated with a double fluid: a metallick humour is inserted
along with a small quantity of the substance of the earth not devoid of
humour. Wherefore the common saying that in gold there is pure earth, but
in iron mostly impure, is wrong; as though there were indeed such a thing
as natural earth, and that the globe itself were (by some unknown process
of refining) depurate. In iron, especially in the best iron, there is earth
in its own nature true and genuine; in the other metals there is not so
much earth as that in place of earth and precipitates there are
consolidated and (so to speak) fixed salts, which are efflorescences of the
globe, and which differ also greatly {22} in firmness and consistency: In
the mines their force rises up along with a twofold humour from the
exhalations, they solidify in the underground spaces into metallic veins:
so too they are also connate by virtue of their place and of the
surrounding bodies, in natural matrices, and take on their specific forms.
Of the various constitutions of loadstones and their diverse substances,
colours, and virtues, mention has been made before: but, now having stated
the cause and origin of metals, we have to examine ferruginous matter not
as it is in the smelted metal, but as that from which the metal is refined.
Quasi-pure iron is found of its proper colour and in its own lodes; still,
not as it will presently be, nor as adapted for its various uses. It is
sometimes dug up covered with white silex or with other stones. It is often
the same in river sand, as in Noricum. A nearly pure ore of iron is now
often dug up in Ireland, which the smiths, without the labours of furnaces,
hammer out in the smithy into iron implements. In France iron is very
commonly smelted out of a liver-coloured stone, in which are glittering
scales; the same kind[71] without the scales is found in England, which
also they use for craftsmen's ruddle[72]. In Sussex in England[73] is a
rich dusky ore and also one of a pale ashen hue, both of which on being
dried for a time, or kept in moderate fires, presently acquire a
liver-colour; here also is found a dusky ore square-shaped with a black
rind of greater hardness. An ore having the appearance of liver is often
variously intermingled with other stones: as al