greement of the metals with the planets, nor of
the planets with the metals, either in numbers or in properties. For what
connexion is there of iron with Mars? unless it be that from the former
numerous instruments, particularly swords and engines of war, are
fashioned. What has copper to do with Venus? or how does tin, or how does
spelter correspond with Jupiter? They should rather be dedicated to Venus.
But this is old wives' talk. Vapour is then a remote cause in the
generation of the metals; the fluid condensed from {21} vapours is a more
proximate one, like the blood and semen in the generation of animals. But
those vapours and juices from vapours pass for the most part into bodies
and change them into marcasites and are carried into lodes (for we have
numerous cases of wood so transmuted), the fitting matrices of bodies,
where they are formed as metals. They enter most often into the truer and
more homogeneal substance of the globe, and in the process of time a vein
of iron results; loadstone is also produced, which is nought else than a
noble kind of iron ore: and for this reason, and on account of its
substance being singular, alien from all other metals, nature very rarely,
if ever, mixes with iron any other metal, while the other metals are very
often minutely mixed, and are produced together. Now when that vapour or
those juices happen to meet, in fitting matrices, with efflorescences
deformed from the earth's homogenic substance, and with divers precipitates
(the forms working thereto), the remainder of the metals are generated (a
specifick nature affecting the properties in that place). For the hidden
primordial elements of metals and stones lie concealed in the earth, as
those of herbs and plants do in its outer crust. For the soil dug out of a
deep well, where would seem to be no suspicion of a conception of seed,
when placed on a very high tower, produces, by the incubation of sun and
sky, green herbage and unbidden weeds; and those of the kind which grow
spontaneously in that region, for each region produces its own herbs and
plants, also its own metals.

_[70]Here corn exults, and there the grape is glad,_
_Here trees and grass unbidden verdure add._
_So mark how Tmolus yields his saffrone store,_
_But ivory is the gift of Indian shore;_
_With incense soft the softer Shebans deal;_
_The stark Chalybeans' element is steel:_
_With acrid castor reek the Pontic wares,_
_Epirus wins the pal