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Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) by Robert Boyle
page 42 of 285 (14%)
Not (then) to mention Cherries, Plums, and I know not how many other
Bodies, wherein the skin is of one Colour, and what it hides of another, I
shall name a couple of Instances drawn from the Colours of Durable bodies
that are thought far more Homogeneous, and have not parts that are either
Organical, or of a Nature approaching thereunto.

3 To give you the first Instance, I shall need but to remind you of what I
told you a little after the beginning of this Essay, touching the Blew and
Red and Yellow, that may be produc'd upon a piece of temper'd Steel, for
these Colours though they be very Vivid, yet if you break the Steel they
adorn, they will appear to be but Superficial; not only the innermost parts
of the Metall, but those that are within a hairs breadth of the
Superficies, having not any of these Colours, but retaining that of the
Steel it self. Besides that, we may as well confirm this Observation, as
some other particulars we elsewhere deliver concerning Colours, by the
following Experiment which we purposely made.

4 We took a good quantity of clean Lead, and melted it with a strong Fire,
and then immediately pouring it out into a clean Vessel of a convenient
shape and matter, (we us'd one of Iron, that the great and sudden Heat
might not injure it) and then carefully and nimbly taking off the Scum that
floated on the top, we perceiv'd, as we expected, the smooth and glossie
Surface of the melted matter, to be adorn'd with a very glorious Colour,
which being as Transitory as Delightfull, did almost immediately give place
to another vivid Colour, and that was as quickly succeeded by a third, and
this as it were chas'd away by a fourth, and so these wonderfully vivid
Colours successively appear'd and vanish'd, (yet the same now and then
appearing the second time) till the Metall ceasing to be hot enough to
afford any longer this pleasing Spectacle, the Colours that chanc'd to
adorn the Surface, when the Lead thus began to cool, remain'd upon it; but
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