PREFACE

XXVll.

he had begun . 9 Recently Vannucci Biringuccio, of Sienna, a wise manexperienced in many matters, wrote in vernacular Italian on thesubject of the melting, separating, and alloying of metals . 10 He

touched briefly on the methods of smelting certain ores, and explainedmore fully the methods of making certain juices ; by reading hisdirections, I have refreshed my memory of those things which I myselfsaw in Italy ; as for many matters on which I write, he did not touch uponthem at all, or touched but lightly. This book was given me by FranciscusBadoarius, a Patrician of Venice, and a man of wisdom and of repute ; thishe had promised that he would do, when in the previous year he was atMarienberg, having been sent by the Venetians as an Ambassador to KingFerdinand. Beyond these books I do not find any writings on the metallicarts. For that reason, even if the book of Strato existed, from all thesesources not one-half of the whole body of the science of mining could bepieced together.

Seeing that there have been so few who have written on the subject of themetals, it appears to me all the more wonderful that so many alchemists havearisen who would compound metals artificially, and who would change oneinto another. Hermolaus Barbaras . 11 a man of high rank and station, anddistinguished in all kinds of learning, has mentioned the names of many inhis writings; and I will proffer more, but only famous ones, for I will limit myselfto a few. Thus Osthanes has written on ■XyfAevrtKa ; and there are Hermes;Chanes ; Zosimus, the Alexandrian, to his sister Theosebia ; Olympiodoras,also an Alexandrian ; Agathodaemon; Democritus, not the one of Abdera,but some other whom I know not; Oras Chrysorichites, Pebichius, Cornelius,Joannes, Apulejus, Petasius, Pelagius, Africanus, Theophilus, Synesius,Stephanus to Heracleus Caesar, Heliodorus to Theodosius, Geber, CallidesRachaidibus, Veradianus, Rodianus, Canides, Merlin, Raymond Lully,Arnold de Villa Nova, and Augustinus Pantheus of Venice ; and three women,Cleopatra, the maiden Taphnutia, and Maria the Jewess . 12 All these alchemistsemploy obscure language, and Johanes Aurelius Augurellus of Rimini,alone has used the language of poetry. There are many other books on

“Jacobi (Der Mineralog Georgius Agricola, Zwickau, 1881, p. 47) says : “ Calbus“ Freibergius, so called by Agricola himself, is certainly no other than the Freiberg Doctor“ Riihlein von Kalbe ; he was, according to Moller, a doctor and burgomaster at Freiberg“ at the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th Centuries. . . . The chronicler

“ describes him as a fine mathematician, who helped to survey and design the mining towns“ of Annaberg in 1497 and Marienberg in 1521.” We would call attention to the statementof Calbus’ views, quoted at the end of Book III, De Re Metallica (p. 75), which are astonishinglysimilar to statements in the Nutzlich Bergbiichlin, and leave little doubt that this “ Calbus ”was the author of that anonymous book on veins. For further discussion see Appendix B.

10 For discussion of Biringuccio see Appendix B. The proper title is De La Pirotechnia(Venice, 1540).

11 Hermolaus Barbarus, according to Watt ( Bibliotheca Britannica, London, 1824), wasa lecturer on Philosophy in Padua. He was born in 1454, died in 1493, and was the author of anumber of works on medicine, natural history, etc., with commentaries on the older authors.

l2 The debt which humanity does owe to these self-styled philosophers must not beoverlooked, for the science of Chemistry comes from three sources—Alchemy, Medicine andMetallurgy. However polluted the former of these may be, still the vast advance which itmade by the discovery of the principal acids, alkalis, and the more common of their salts,should be constantly recognized. It is obviously impossible, within the space of a footnote, to