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Book X lapis sabinicus, lapis selentinus, lapis liparaeus and other mixtures of stone, metal and earth

Book X lapis sabinicus, lapis selentinus, lapis liparaeus and other mixtures of stone, metal and earth Page of 251 Book X lapis sabinicus, lapis selentinus, lapis liparaeus and other mixtures of stone, metal and earth Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
BOOK X
207
the red and lead-colored silver minerals. They are found in the same localities in Misena and Bohemia where the gray and black varieties are the more common, the others rare. Recently the Heavenly Host mine at Annaberg has yielded the gray variety in large quantities. The Schonberg vein in the Joachimsthal valley has produced a large quantity of the purple mineral and a smaller quantity of the yellow mineral. The liver-colored mineral was found in the upper part of the mine at Abertham. Not only are masses of variable size found that have formed from an earth and silver but also gravel and even more often sand that may be cemented with the same minerals. But this is enough concerning the na­ture of silver minerals.
Copper and gold are mixed with earths to form new species that have alien colors in the same manner as silver. Gold is often red and copper often has a color similar to native argentite." The German miners call it by the same name although it is not as dark. It is found in the mines of Suacium in Noricum and in the mines of Neusohl in the Carpathian Mountains. The other minerals are rarer.10
Similar minerals of quicksilver are sometimes scarlet red11 as the min­eral from Schonbach; sometimes liver-colored12 as the mineral from Idria; and sometimes black13 as the mineral from Kreucenach. The red mineral resembles sand; the liver-colored mineral, stone; the black, the down of a plant. The red quicksilver mineral is the most common, the liver-colored less so while the black is rare. When the red mineral is massive it is called ανθραξ by one Greek writer because it resembles burning char­coal. The material from which minium is called is made αμμιος by the Greeks which means fine sand, and κιννάβαρι by Theophrastus. Quicksilver is obtained from all of these as I shall explain in the books of De Re Metallica.
Minium is prepared in the following manner. Cinnabar, if very pure, is placed in wooden casks and crushed with the ends of iron rods that are operated by a water wheel.14 The fine material is passed through a screen and then pulverized. That which cannot be pulverized is crushed further
Argentum rude album (white), in part tetrahedrite; in part amalgam, silver tel-
lurides, etc. Argentum rude cineraceum (gray), in part cerargyrite; in part tetrahedrite. Argentum rude jecoris colore (liver-colored), cerargyrite and other silver haloids. Argentum rude luteum (yellow), in part silver tellurides. Argentum rude nigrum (black), in part stephanite, polybasite, etc. Argentum rude purpureum (purple), in part sternbergite.
9  Aes rude plumbei colons, chalcocite, copper sulphide.
10 The reference to red gold may refer to finely divided and more or less invisible gold in the outcrops of pyritic veins.
11  Argentum vivum rude rubrum, cinnabar, mercury sulphide.
12 Argentum vivum rude jecoris colore, calomel, mercury chloride.
13 Argentum vivum rude nigrum, metacinnabar, mercury sulphide.
14 An early type of stamp mill.
Book X lapis sabinicus, lapis selentinus, lapis liparaeus and other mixtures of stone, metal and earth Page of 251 Book X lapis sabinicus, lapis selentinus, lapis liparaeus and other mixtures of stone, metal and earth
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