To the Honourable,
And true Promoter
of all solid Learning,
ROBERT BOYLE,Esq;
TSIR ,
His Treatise challengeth the inscripti¬on of Your name for many reasons.
The Author of it Dedicated this piece to a Person of Honour, and eminent parts, both which concurr in you, and herein I thought
fit to follow his Foot-steps. Then Your ability to judge of the piece, being for the most part Chymical, wherein you have shewed the world
not onely Your great progress & singular know¬ledge, but have also taught it the true use of that most beneficial Art, as to the improve¬ment of Reason and Philosophie. Most Writers therein delivering onely a farrago of processes and unintelligible Enigm' as. But You have chalked out the way of solid reasoning upon whatsoever occurrs to observation in such ex¬
periments. Next, you were the principal cause that
that this Book is made publick, by proposing and urging my undertaking of it, till it came to a command from that most Noble So¬ciety, and serious indagators of Nature, meeting at Gresham College, whose desire I neither
could nor ought to decline. Though their, and your choice might have been much more happy,
there being many of that company far more adapted for this undertaking than my self. Be-
sides,I doubt not but you will much promote by Tour practice the Art it's self, there being
scarcely any thin? contained in it, but you have already judiciously had experience in. Not, because this Translation will any whit a¬vail you (since your skill in the native Lan¬
guage is sufficiently known to all that have the honour to be acquainted with yon but may be compendious to you for such as you shall employ in these operations. Furthermore I have herein also satisfied your vast desire of communicating
knowledge to others, who though intelligent of the Language could not procure Copies in the Original; And lastly the candor of your genius
nodess than that of your intellectuals ready to excuse the errours and stips what soever of,
Sir, Your most humble and most regard¬
ful Servant,
C. M.