The book is diffuse and confused, and without arrangement or system, yet a little
consideration enables one of experience to understand most statements. There are over 120
recipes, with, as said before, much repetition ; for instance, the parting of gold and silver
by use of sulphur is given eight times in different places. The final line of the book is : " Take
this in good part, dear reader, after it, please God, there will be a better." In truth, however,
there are books on assaying four centuries younger that are worse. This is, without doubt,
the first written word on assaying, and it displays that art already full grown, so far as concerns gold and silver, and to some extent copper and lead ; for if we eliminate the words
dependent on the atomic theory from modern works on dry assaying, there has been but very
minor progress. The art could not, however, have reached this advanced stage but by slow
accretion, and no doubt this collection of recipes had been handed from father to son long
before the 16th century. It is of wider interest that these booklets represent the first milestone
on the road to quantitative analysis, and in this light they have been largely ignored by the
historians of chemistry. Internal evidence in Book VII. of De Re Metallica, together with
the reference in the Preface, leave little doubt that Agricola was familiar with these booklets. His work, however, is arranged more systematically, each operation stated more clearly,
with more detail and fresh items ; and further, he gives methods of determining copper and
lead which are but minutely touched upon in the Probierbüchlein, while the directions as to tin,
bismuth, quicksilver, and iron are entirely new.
Biringuccio (Vanuccio). We practically know nothing about this author. From the
preface to the first edition of his work it appears he was styled a mathematician, but in the
text14 he certainly states that he was most of his time engaged in metallurgical operations,
and that in pursuit of such knowledge he had visited Germany. The work was in Italian,
published at Venice in 1540, the title page of the first edition as below :—
