 death,) and also, with a view to do some good to myself, as it is the finest air in the world. I took a house in the village to live the more easily, as the lodging-houses are all crowded here, and resolved to amuse the days I have left in cultivating the science of chemistry; not in order to finish what nature has begun, do you see me, (as the alchymists talk,) and procure to the imperfect metals the much desired coction; but, to examine substances, and by the examination, obtain ideas of the bodies capable of the three degrees of fermentation, spiritous, acetous, and putrid; and of the products of those fermentations, to wit, ardent spirits, acids analogous to those of vegetables and animals, and volatile alkalis.
To this purpose, I made for myself a laboratory, and about a year ago, began to employ my vessels and furnaces in various processes. A vast variety of entertaining things have since occurred, and my life is thereby made agreeable and pleasing; though to look at my poor frame, one would think me incapable of any satisfactions. I will give you an instance or two of my amusements, and do you judge, if they may not afford a mind more delight, than the tumultuous

joys of love and wine, horse-racing, cock-fighting, hunting, and other violent pleasures can yield.
You know, good Sir, I suppose, that there are six metals, two perfect, and four imperfect. Gold and silver, perfect: the others, copper, tin, lead, and iron. Quicksilver is by some called a seventh metal: but that I think cannot be, as it is not malleable. Yet it is not to be confounded with the semi-metals, as it differs from the metals no otherwise than by being constantly in fusion; which is occasioned by its aptness to flow with such a small degree of heat, that be there ever so little warmth on earth, there is still more than enough to keep mercury in fusion. It must be called then, in my opinion, a metallic body of a particular kind: And the more so, let me add, as art has not yet found out a way of depriving it wholly of its Phlogiston.
*I must observe to you, good Sir, in order to be intelligible in what I am saying, that the Phlogiston in metals is the matter of fire as a constituent principle in bodies. It is the element of fire combined with some other substance, which serves it as a
