Note 6 — BOOK VII.

[Pg 232][6] Additamenta,—"Additions." Hence the play on words.

We have adopted "flux" because the old English equivalent for all these materials was "flux," although in modern nomenclature the term is generally restricted to those substances which, by chemical combination in the furnace, lower the melting point of some of the charge. The "additions" of Agricola, therefore, include reducing, oxidizing, sulphurizing, desulphurizing, and collecting agents as well as fluxes. A critical examination of the fluxes mentioned in the next four pages gives point to the Author's assertion that "some are of a very complicated nature." However, anyone of experience with home-taught assayers has come in contact with equally extraordinary combinations. The four orders of "additions" enumerated are quite impossible to reconcile from a modern metallurgical point of view.