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BOOK X
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207
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the
red and lead-colored silver minerals. They are found in the same
localities in Misena and Bohemia where the gray and black varieties are
the more common, the others rare. Recently the Heavenly Host mine at
Annaberg has yielded the gray variety in large quantities. The
Schonberg vein in the Joachimsthal valley has produced a large quantity
of the purple mineral and a smaller quantity of the yellow mineral. The
liver-colored mineral was found in the upper part of the mine at
Abertham. Not only are masses of variable size found that have formed
from an earth and silver but also gravel and even more often sand that
may be cemented with the same minerals. But this is enough concerning
the nature of silver minerals.
Copper
and gold are mixed with earths to form new species that have alien
colors in the same manner as silver. Gold is often red and copper often
has a color similar to native argentite." The German miners call it by
the same name although it is not as dark. It is found in the mines of
Suacium in Noricum and in the mines of Neusohl in the Carpathian
Mountains. The other minerals are rarer.10
Similar minerals of quicksilver are sometimes scarlet red11 as the mineral from Schonbach; sometimes liver-colored12 as the mineral from Idria; and sometimes black13
as the mineral from Kreucenach. The red mineral resembles sand; the
liver-colored mineral, stone; the black, the down of a plant. The red
quicksilver mineral is the most common, the liver-colored less so while
the black is rare. When the red mineral is massive it is called ανθραξ by one Greek writer because it resembles burning charcoal. The material from which minium is called is made αμμιος by the Greeks which means fine sand, and κιννάβαρι by Theophrastus. Quicksilver is obtained from all of these as I shall explain in the books of De Re Metallica.
Minium is
prepared in the following manner. Cinnabar, if very pure, is placed in
wooden casks and crushed with the ends of iron rods that are operated
by a water wheel.14 The fine material is passed through a screen and then pulverized. That which cannot be pulverized is crushed further
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Argentum rude album (white), in part tetrahedrite; in part amalgam, silver tel-
lurides, etc. Argentum rude cineraceum (gray), in part cerargyrite; in part tetrahedrite. Argentum rude jecoris colore (liver-colored), cerargyrite and other silver haloids. Argentum rude luteum (yellow), in part silver tellurides. Argentum rude nigrum (black), in part stephanite, polybasite, etc. Argentum rude purpureum (purple), in part sternbergite.
9 Aes rude plumbei colons, chalcocite, copper sulphide.
10 The reference to red gold may refer to finely divided and more or less invisible gold in the outcrops of pyritic veins.
11 Argentum vivum rude rubrum, cinnabar, mercury sulphide.
12 Argentum vivum rude jecoris colore, calomel, mercury chloride.
13 Argentum vivum rude nigrum, metacinnabar, mercury sulphide.
14 An early type of stamp mill.
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