strong fire without tin, they burn and waste away. If brazen vessels
be tinned, the tin abateth the venom of rust, and amendeth the savour.
Also mirrors be tempered with tin, and white colour that is called
Ceruse is made of tin, as it is made of lead. Aristotle saith that tin
is compounded of good quicksilver and of evil brimstone. And these
twain be not well medlied but in small parts compounded, therefore tin
hath colour of silver but not the sadness thereof. In the book of
Alchemy Hermes saith, that tin breaketh all metals and bodies that it
is medlied with, and that for the great dryness of tin. And destroyeth
in metal the kind that is obedient to hammer work. And if thou
medliest quicksilver therewith, it withstandeth the crassing thereof
and maketh it white, but afterward it maketh it black and defileth it.
Also there it is said that burnt tin gendereth red colour, as lead
doth; and if the fire be strong, the first matter of tin cometh soon
again. Also though tin be more nesh than silver, and more hard than
lead, yet lead may not be soon soldered to lead nor to brass nor to
iron without tin. Neither may these be soldered without grease or
tallow.

Brimstone is a vein of the earth and hath much air and fire in its
composition. Of brimstone there are four kinds. One is called
_vivum_, the which when it is digged, shineth and flourisheth,
the which only among all the kinds thereof physicians use. Avicenna
means that brimstone is hot and dry in the fourth degree, and is
turned into kind of brimstone in part of water, of earth, and of fire,
and that brimstone is sometimes great and boisterous and full of
drausts, and sometimes pure white, clear and subtle, and sometimes
mean between both. And by this diverse disposition, divers metals are
gendered of brimstone and of quicksilver.