part well, and have employ’d oyl of Vitriol Cleer and Strong enough) see the Darkness of the liquor presently begin to be discuss’d, and grow pretty Cleer and Transparent, losing its Inky Blackness, which you may again restore to it by the affusion of a small quantity of a very strong Solution of Salt of Tartar.  And though neither of these Atramentous liquors will seem other than very Pale Ink, if you write with a clean Pen dipt in them, yet that is common to them with some sorts of Ink that prove very good when Dry, as I have also found, that when I made these carefully, what I wrote with either of them, especially with the Former, would when throughly Dry grow Black enough not to appear bad Ink.  This Experiment of taking away and restoring Blackness from and to the liquors, we have likewise tryed in Common Ink; but there it succeeds not so well, and but very slowly, by reason that the Gum wont to be employed in the making it, does by its Tenacity oppose the operations of the above mention’d Saline liquors.  But to consider Gum no more, what some kind of Praecipitation may have to do in the producing and destroying of Inks without it, I have elsewhere given you some occasion and assistance to enquire; But I must not now stay to do so my self, only I shall take notice to you, that though it be taken for granted that bodies will not be Praecipitated by Alcalizat Salts, that have not first been dissolved in some Acid Menstruums, yet I have found upon tryals, which my conjectures lead me to make on purpose, That divers Vegetables barely infus’d, or, but slightly decocted in common water, would, upon the affusion of a Strong and Cleer Lixivium of Potashes, and much more of some other Praecipitating liquors that I sometimes employ, afford good store of a Crudled matter, such as I have had in the Praecipitations of Vegetable substances, by the intervention of Acid things, and that this matter was easily separable from the rest of the liquor, being left behind by it in the Filtre; and in making the first Ink mention’d in this Experiment, I found that I could by Filtration separate pretty store of a very Black pulverable substance, that remain’d in the Filtre, and when the Ink was made Cleer again by the Oyl of Vitriol, the affusion of dissolv’d Sal Tartari seem’d but to Praecipitate, and thereby to Unite and render Conspicuous the particles of the Black mixture that had before been dispers’d into very Minute and singly Invisible particles by the Incisive and resolving power of the highly Corrosive Oyl of Vitriol.

And to manifest, Pyrophilus, that Galls are not so requisite as many suppose to the making Atramentous Liquors, we have sometimes made the following Experiment, We took dryed Rose leaves and Decocted them for a while in Fair Water, into two or three spoonfulls of this Decoction we shook a few drops of a strong and well filtrated Solution of Vitriol (which perhaps had it been Green would have done as well) and immediately