ther, being fastned only by some more
easily Dissoluble Ciment, which seems to be the Case of some of the
following Experiments, where you'l find the Colour of many Corpuscles
brought to cohere by having been Precipitated together, Destroy'd by the
Affusion of very peircing and incisive Liquors. The other of the two ways I
was speaking of, is, by Dividing the Grosser and more Solid Particles into
Minute ones, which will be always Lesser, and for the most part otherwise
Shap'd than the Entire Corpuscle so Divided, as it will happen in a piece
of Wood reduc'd into Splinters or Chips, or as when a piece of Chrystal
heated red Hot and quench'd in Cold water is crack'd into a multitude of
little Fragments, which though they fall not asunder, alter the Disposition
of the Body of the Chrystal, as to its manner of Reflecting the Light, as
we shall have Occasion to shew hereafter.

22. There is a fourth way contrary to the third, whereby a Liquor may
change the Colour of another Body, especially of another Fluid, and that
is, by procuring the Coalition of several Particles that before lay too
Scatter'd and Dispers'd to exhibit the Colour that afterwards appears. Thus
sometimes when I have had a Solution of Gold so Dilated, that I doubted
whether the Liquor had really Imbib'd any true Gold or no, by pouring in a
little _Mercury_, I have been quickly able to satisfie my Self, that the
Liquor contain'd Gold, that Mettall after a little while Cloathing the
Surface of the _Quick-silver_, with a Thin Film of its own Livery. And
chiefly, though not only by this way of bringing the Minute parts of Bodies
together in such Numbers as to make them become Notorious to the Eye, many
of these Colours seem to be Generated which are produc'd by Precipitations,
especially by such as are wont to be made with fair Water, as when Resinous
Gumms dissolv'd in Spirit of Wine, are let fall again, if the Spirit be
Copiously diluted with that weakning Liquor. And so out of the Rectify'd
and Transparent Butter of _Antimony_, by the bare Mixture of fair Water,
there will be plentifully Precipitated that Milk-white Substance, which by
having its Looser Salts well wash'd off, is turn'd into that Medicine,
which Vulgar _Chymists_ are pleas'd to call _Mercurius Vitae._

23. A fifth way, by which a Liquor may change the Colour of a Body, is, by
Dislocating the Parts, and putting them out of their former Order into
another, and perhaps also altering the Posture o