III. That elemental fire is not hot in the highest degree, may be evinced, by shewing there is another heat which is much greater, and that is the heat of the sun, when its rays are concentrated in a burning-glass. It is certain, that the most vigorous effects and operations of elemental fire, does not come up in any degree of comparison, to those of that most ardent star. This has been proved evidently, by the experiments made with the burning-glass invented and fabricated by Mons. Villete, an eminent artist of Lions in France; a description of which, was printed and published at Liege in 1715, and was afterwards inserted in the Memoirs of Trevoux of the year 1716. The instant the focus of this burning-glass was applied to any sort of wood, be it ever so green or moist, it set it as suddenly in a flame, as elemental fire would do dry tow. In less than a minute, it melted metals which were the most difficult of liquefaction, such as copper, iron, gold, and all minerals in general. The highest operation the chymists have found elemental fire capable of performing, is that of vitrifaction, which is so called from its reducing matter to a species of glass; but the most intense fire, besides its being tardy in this operation, can perform it only on particular subjects; whereas the burning-glass vitrifies in a short time, every kind of matter, tiles, bricks, cement, bones, stones of all sorts, even marble, and porphyry; and what is most extraordinary, it vitrifies those sort of stones also, with which they make the bottoms of furnaces for melting iron ore in, which although they will endure that intense heat for many years together, will begin to dissolve almost immediately, upon applying the focus of the burning-glass to them. IV. Although this is very wonderful, what we are about to relate is still more so. The analytic resolution of gold, or what is the same thing, the separation or division of its principal component parts, had till then been deemed impossible; for the misers are not more tenacious of hoarding or preserving their gold, than the gold is of preserving its intrinsic texture; for in spite of all the tortures by fire, which the chymists could invent to break this texture, they could never make it lose its original form. Yet notwithstanding the valour of this generous metal, it submitted obediently to the power of the sun exerted through the burning-glass; as if that power to whom it is said to owe its existence, was the only one to which it could bear to be subject.