I suppose, these Instances may Suffice to satisfie you, that Minerals are to be excepted out of the forementioned Rule, which perhaps, though it seldome fail in substances belonging to the Vegetable or Animal Kingdome, may yet be Question’d even in some of these, if that be true, which the Judicious Traveller Bellonius affirms, that Charcoales made out of the Wood of Oxycaeder are White; And I could not find that though in Retorts Hartshorn and other White Bodies will be Denigrated by Heat, yet Camphire would not at all lose its Whiteness, though I have purposely kept it in such a heat, as made it melt and boyl.

EXPERIMENT V.

And now I speak of Camphire, it puts me in mind of adding this Experiment, That, though as I said in Clos’d Glasses, I could not Denigrate it by Heat, but it would Sublime to the sides and top of the Glass, as it was before, yet not only it will, being set on fire in the Free Air, send forth a Copious smoak, but having purposely upon some of it that was Flaming, clapt a Large Glass, almost in the form of a Hive, (but more Slender only) with a Hole at the top, (which I caus’d to be made to trye Experiments of Fire and Flame in) it continued so long burning that it Lin’d all the Inside of the Glass with a Soot as Black as Ink, and so Copious, that the Closeness of the Vessel consider’d, almost all that part of the White Camphire that did take Fire, seem’d to have been chang’d into that deep Black Substance.

EXPERIMENT VI

And this also brings into my mind another Experiment that I made about the production of Blackness, whereof, for Reasons too long to be here deduced, I expected and found a good Success, an it was this:  I took Rectifi’d Oyl of Vitriol (that I might have the Liquor Clean as well as Strong) and by degrees mixt with it a convenient proportion of the Essential Oyl, as Chymists call it, of Wormwood, drawn over with store of Water in a Limbec, and warily Distilling the mixture in a Retort, there remain’d a scarce credible quantity of dry Matter, Black as a Coal.  And because the Oyl of Wormwood, though a Chymical Oyl drawn by a Virtuoso, seem’d to have somewhat in it of the Colour of the Plant, I Substituted in its Room, the Pure and Subtile Essential Oyl of Winter-Savory, and mixing little by little this Liquor, with (if I mis-remember not) an Equal weight of the formerly mention’d Rectifi’d Oyl of Vitriol, and Distilling them as before in a Retort, besides what there pass’d over into the Receiver, even these two clear Liquors left me a Considerable Proportion, (though not so great as the two former) of a Substance Black as Pitch, which I yet Keep by me as a Rarity.

EXPERIMENT VII.