Put this Amalgam into a chamoy bag: tie a knot on its neck, and squeeze it hard between your fingers, over some wide-mouthed vessel; there will issue through the pores of the leather numberless little jets of Mercury, forming a sort of shower, that will collect into large globules in the vessel placed underneath. When you can force out no more Mercury by this means, open the bag, and in it you will find the Amalgam freed from the superfluous Mercury; the Gold retaining only about as much thereof as nearly equals itself in weight. Put this Amalgam into a glass retort; set this retort in the sand-bath of a reverberating furnace; cover it quite over with sand; apply a glass receiver half full of water, so that the nose of the retort may be under the water. The receiver need not be luted to the retort. Give a gradual heat, and raise the fire till drops of the sublimed Mercury appear in the neck of the retort, and fall into the water with a hissing noise. If you hear any noise in the retort slacken your fire a little. Lastly, when you observe, that, though you raise the fire still higher than before, nothing more will come over, take out your retort, break it, and there you will find the Gold, which must be melted in a crucible with Borax. _OBSERVATIONS._ Gold is a perfect metal, which can by no means be deprived of its Phlogiston, and on which few, even of the most powerful chymical solvents, have any effect: and therefore it almost always hath its metalline form when found in the earth; from which it may sometimes be separated by simple lotion. The Gold dust found in the sands of certain rivers is of this kind. When it resides in stones, or tenacious earths, it may be extracted by the process here delivered; to wit, by Amalgamation, or combination of Mercury with Gold. Mercury is incapable of uniting with any earthy substances, not even with the metallic earths, when they are deprived of their Phlogiston, and consequently have not the metalline form. Hence it follows, that when Mercury is triturated with particles of Gold, of earth, and of stone, mingled together, it unites with the Gold, and separates it from those heterogeneous matters. Yet, if there be along with the Gold any other metal, in its metalline form, except Iron, the Mercury will amalgamate with that also. This often happens to Silver, which being a perfect metal as well as Gold, is for that reason sometimes dug up in its metalline form, and even incorporated with Gold. When this is the case, the mass that remains in the retort, after abstracting the Mercury of the Amalgama, is a compound of Gold and Silver, which are to be separated from each other by the methods we shall give for that purpose. The present process is therefore applicable to Silver as well as Gold.