bring the Liquor to a kind of a Crimson, and afterwards
to a Dark and Opacous Redness, somewhat like that
of Clotted Blood. And in the passage of the Liquor
from one of these Colours to the other, you may observe,
if you consider it attentively, divers other less
noted Colours belonging to Red, to which it is not
easie to give Names; especially considering how much
the proportion of the Decoction to the fair Water,
and the strength of that Decoction, together with
that of the trajected Light and other Circumstances,
may vary the Phaenomena of this Experiment. For
the convenienter making whereof, we use instead of
a Vial, any slender Pipe of Glass of about a foot
or more in length, and about the thickness of a mans
little finger; For, if leaving one end of this Pipe
open, you Seal up the other Hermetically, (or at least
stop it exquisitely with a Cork well fitted to it,
and over-laid with hard Sealing Wax melted, and rubb’d
upon it;) you shall have a Glass, wherein may be observ’d
the Variations of the Colours of Liquors much better
than in large Vials, and wherein Experiments of this
Nature may be well made with very small quantities
of Liquor. And if you please, you may in this
Pipe produce variety of Colours in the various parts
of the Liquor, and keep them swimming upon one another
unmix’d for a good while. And some have
marveil’d to see, what variety of Colours we
have sometimes (but I confess rather by chance than
skill) produc’d in those Glasses, by the bare
infusion of Brazil, variously diluted with fair Water,
and alter’d by the Infusion of several Chymical
Spirits and other Saline Liquors devoid themselves
of Colour, and when the whole Liquor is reduc’d
to an Uniform degree of Colour, I have taken pleasure
to make that very Liquor seem to be of Colours gradually
differing, by filling with it Glasses of a Conical
figure, (whether the Glass have its basis in the ordinary
position, or turn’d upwards.) And yet you need
not Glasses of an extraordinary shape to see an instance
of what the vari’d mixture of Light and Shadow
can do in the diversifying of the Colour. For
if you take but a large round Vial, with a somewhat
long and slender Neck, and filling it with our Red
Infusion of Brazil, hold it against the Light, you
will discern a notable Disparity betwixt the Colour
of that part of the Liquor which is in the Body of
the Vial, and that which is more pervious to the Light
in the Neck. Nay, I remember, that I once had
a Glass and a Blew Liquor (consisting chiefly (or only,
if my memory deceive me not,) of a certain Solution
of Verdigrease) so fitted for my purpose, that though
in other Glasses the Experiment would not succeed,
yet when that particular Glass was fill’d with
that Solution, in the Body of the Vial it appear’d
of a Lovely Blew, and in the neck, (where the Light
did more dilute the Colour,) of a manifest Green; and
though I suspected there might be some latent Yellowness
in the substance of the neck of the Glass, which might


