n a
window where the Sunbeams may shine freely on it, then if you turn your
back to the Sun and take a Pen or some such slender Body, and hold it
over-thwart betwixt the Sun and the Liquor, you may perceive that the
Shadow projected by the Pen upon the Liquor, will not all of it be a vulgar
and Dark, but in part a curiously Colour'd shadow, that edge of it, which
is next the Body that makes it, being almost of a lively Golden Colour, and
the remoter verge of a Caeruleous one.

[16] _Nicolaus Monardes_ lib _simplic. ex India allatis_, cap. 27.

These and other Phaenomena, which I have observ'd in this delightfull
Experiment, divers of my friends have look'd upon not without some wonder,
and I remember an excellent Oculist finding by accident in a friends
Chamber a fine Vial full of this Liquor, which I had given that friend, and
having never heard any thing of the Experiment, nor having any Body near
him that could tell him what this strange Liquor might be, was a great
while apprehensive, as he presently after told me, that some strange new
distemper was invading his Eyes. And I confess that the unusualness of the
Phaenomena made me very sollicitous to find out the Cause of this
Experiment, and though I am far from pretending to have found it, yet my
enquiries have, I suppose, enabled me to give such hints, as may lead your
greater sagacity to the discovery of the Cause of this wonder. And first
finding that this Tincture, if it were too copious in the water, Kept the
Colours from being so lively, and their Change from being so discernable,
and finding also that the Impregnating Virtue of this Wood did by its being
frequently Infus'd in New Water by degrees Decay, I Conjectur'd that the
Tincture afforded by the Wood must proceed from some Subtiler parts of it
drawn forth by the Water, which swimming too and fro in it did so Modifie
the Light, as to exhibit such and such Colours; and because these Subtile
parts were so easily Soluble even in Cold water, I concluded that they must
abound with Salts, and perhaps contain much of the Essential Salt, as the
_Chymists_ call it, of the Wood. And to try whether these Subtile parts
were Volatile enough to be Distill'd, without the Dissolution of their
Texture, I carefully Distill'd some of the Tincted Liquor in very low
Vessels, and the gentle heat of a Lamp Furnace; but found all that came
over to be as Limpid and Colourless as Rock-water, and the Liquor remaining
in the Vesse