Fire also hath incredible force of it self in changing metals. Is not steel made iron by force of Fire, and iron of steel by different proceeding? Experience dayly teacheth us also divers kinds of changes and refinings by Fire; why is it not possible in metals by an expert Chymist having skill in them? Who would believe that a live bird lurks in an egg, and an hearb having leaves, flowers, and odour, in the seed? Why may not then abortive metals, getting not yet perfection, be perfected by Art, with help of Fire? Is not an unripe apple or pear ripened by the heat of the Sun? Which some curious and industrious men observing, have imitated nature in their works; and have found some metals not destroyed with the heat of Fire, but enriched with a secret gainful heat; so that melted (digestion being made) they have yielded double weight of gold and silver. Yea I my self have seen the common oar of lead digested after the aforesaid manner, which was not only inriched with silver thereby, but also partaked of gold which it wanted before in ordinary tryal. Besides one might work this in great quantity, as with an hundred pounds; which work of minerals will without doubt bring great profit to the skilful triers of lead: But know this, that not every tryal of lead will be furnished with gold, but the oar to be ever enriched with silver, experience being witness. Many such things are found in Nature incredible to the ignorant, and those that are unexercised. But if we mortals were more diligent in reading the book written with the hand of God in the pages of the four Elements, surely we should Find more secrets and wonders in them, but skill and wealth is got with sweat of face and not by sloth; therefore _labour_ and _pray_. Metals are also meliorated by the help of gradation like to germination. For it is well known, that the shoot or grass of some fruitful garden-tree implanted in a wood, makes that tree afterwards to bear not wild fruits, but very good and sweet like them of the implanted shoot, as one may see in iron dissolved in an acid spirit, fermented with Venus and turned into Copper: by which means doubtless copper is turned into silver, and silver into gold, if the true manner of fermentation were known. Now this transmutation is like digestion, making beef or horse flesh of grass in the stomach of oxe and horse, and mans flesh of beef, in the stomach of man.