Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664)Boyle, Robert
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Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664)
Boyle, Robert
Color -- Early works to 1800; Colors -- Early works to 1800
that the Charcoals of Oxy-cedar are not of the former of these two Colours,
but of the latter. And the Smoak of our Tinby coals here in _England_, has
been usually observ'd, rather to Blanch linnen then to Black it. To all
which, other Particulars of the like nature might be added, but I rather
choose to put you in mind of the third Experiment, about making Black
Liquors, or Inks, of Bodies that were non of them Black before. For how can
it be said, that when those Liquors are put together actually Cold, and
continue so after their mixture, there intervenes any new _Adustion of
Sulphur_ to produce the emergent Blackness? (and the same question will be
appliable to the Blackness produc'd upon the blade of a Knife, that has cut
Lemmons and some kind of Sowr apples, if the juyce (though both Actually
and Potentially Cold) be not quickly wip'd of) And when by the instilling
either of a few drops of Oyl of Vitriol as in the second Experiment, or of
a little of the Liquor mention'd in the Passage pointed at in the fourth
Experiment, (where I teach at once to Destroy one black Ink, and make
another) the Blackness produc'd by those Experiments is presently
destroy'd; if the Colour proceeded only from the Plenty of Sulphurous
parts, torrify'd in the Black Bodies, I demand, what becomes of them, when
the Colour so suddenly dissappears? For it cannot Reasonably be said, that
all those that suffic'd to make so great a quantity of Black Matter, should
resort to so very small a proportion of the Clarifying Liquor, (if I may so
call it) as to be deluted by it, with out at all Denigrating it. And if it
be said that the Instill'd Liquor dispers'd those Black Corpuscles, I
demand, how that Dispersion comes to destroy their Blackness, but by making
such a Local Motion of their parts, as destroys their former Texture? which
may be a Matter of such moment in cases like ours, that I remember that I
have in few houres, without addition, from Soot it self, attain'd pretty
store of Crystalline Salt, and good store of Transparent Liquor, and (which
I have on another occasion noted as remarkable) this so Black Substance had
its Colour so alter'd, by the change of Texture it receiv'd from the fire,
wherewith it was distill'd, that it did for a great while afford such
plenty of very white Exhalations, that the Receiver, though large, seem'd
to be almost fill'd with Milk.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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