Royal Society Miscellaneous Manuscript 6/5: Alchemical notes in ...

This last white spirit when congeales in cold & relents & melts in a gentle hea warmth
& so does the third & permanent menstruum. They are both universal dissolvents &
dissolve by penetrating without ebullition as mercury penetrates metals in amalgamation.
After 7 or 8 Eagles when the matter begins to be ripe, if you drop a drop into a silver spoon & heat the spoon, the spirit will soak into the spoon
& being evaporated leaves the silver black within & without in manner of a black spot
upon y e spoon, & the like will happen to gold by the red spirit after you have the
three principles. This black spot in the silver spoon is the signe by w ch you {???} may
know when your matter is sufficiently ripened by the eagles. ffor till it be so penetrant as
to dissolve silver it is not sufficiently ripe.
If when you have the three principles you dissolve one part of the lunar sublimate in
two parts of y e white spirit & digest them 40 days, the whole will become white spirit of
ten times more vertue then before except a very few fæces. But this will not
happen till the matter is sufficiently ripened and acuated by the eagles.
If you dissolve one part of the red eath or ashes of the first work in two parts of the
red spirit & digest 40 days & destill: the whole, except a few feces, will ascend & be red
spirit of ten times more vertue then before. Thus may the white & red spirits be
multiplied in infinitum. ffor y e Philosophers tell you that Mercury being once dissolved
dissolves its self ever after in infinitum.