Experiment in Consort, Touching — Whiteness & Blackness
Experiment I.
Illuminated H in Having Aving promis’d in the 114, and 115. Pages of the foregoing Discourse of Whiteness and Blackness, to shew, that those two Colours may by a change of Texture in bodies, each of them apart Diaphanous and Colourless, be at pleasure and in a trice as well Generated as Destroy’d, We shall begin with Experiments that may acquit us of that promise.
Take then what Quantity you please of Fair Water, and having Heated it, put into it as much good Common Sublimate, as it is able to Dissolve, and (to be sure of having it well glutted:) continue putting in the Sublimate, till some of it lye Untouch’d in the bottom of the Liquor, Filter this Solution through Cap-paper, to have it cleer and limpid, and into a spoonfull or two thereof, (put into a clean glass vessel,) shake about four or five drops (according as you took more or less of this Solution) of good limpid Spirits of Urine, and immediately the whole mixture will appear White like Milk, to which mixture if you presently add a convenient proportion of Rectifi’d Aqua Fortis (for the number of drops is hard to determine, because of the Differing Strength of the liquor, but easily found by tryal) the Whiteness will presently disappear, and the whole mixture become Transparent, which you may, if you please, again reduce to a good degree of Whiteness (though inferiour to the first) onely by a more copious affusion of fresh Spirit of Urine. N. First, That it is not so necessary to employ either Aqua Fortis or Spirit of Urine about this Experiment, but that we have made it with other liquors instead of these, of which perhaps more elsewhere. Secondly, That this Experiment, though not made with the same Menstruums, nor producing the same Colour is yet much of Kin to that other to be mentioned in this Tract among our other Experiments of Colours, about turning a Solution of Præcipitate into an Orange-colour, and the Chymical Reason being much alike in both, the annexing it to one of them may suffice FOR both.