The above mention'd way of making Lakes we have tryed not only with
Turmerick, but also with Madder, which yielded us a Red Lake; and with Rue,
which afforded us an extract, of (almost if not altogether) the same Colour
with that of the leaves.

But in regard that 'tis Principally the Alcalizate Salt of the Pot-ashes,
which enables the water to Extract so powerfully the Tincture of the
Decocted Vegetables, I fear that our Author may be mistaken by supposing
that the Decoction will alwayes be of the very same Colour with the
Vegetable it is made off. For Lixiviate Salts, to which Pot-ashes eminently
belong, though by peircing and opening the Bodies of Vegetables, they
prepare and dispose them to part readily with their Tincture, yet some
Tinctures they do not only draw out, but likewise alter them, as may be
easily made appear by many of the Experiments already set down in this
Treatise, and though Allom being of an Acid Nature, its Solutions may in
some Cases destroy the Adventitious Colours produc'd by the Alcaly, and
restore the former: yet besides that Allom is not, as I have lately shown,
a meer Acid Salt, but a mixt Body, and besides, that its operations are
languid in comparison of the activity of Salts freed by Distillation, or by
Incineration and Dissolution, from the most of their Earthy parts, we have
seen already Examples, that in divers Cases an Acid Salt will not restore a
Vegetable substance to the Colour of which an Alcalizate one had depriv'd
it, but makes it assume a third very differing from both, as we formerly
told you, that if Syrrup of Violets were by an Alcaly turn'd Green, (which
Colour, as I have try'd, may be the same way produc'd in the Violet-leaves
themselves without any Relation to a Syrrup) an Acid Salt would not make it
Blew again, but Red. And though I have by this way of making Lakes, made
Magisteries (for such they seem to be) of Brazil, and as I remember of
Cochinele it self, and of other things, Red, Yellow or Green which Lakes
were enobled with a Rich Colour, and others had no bad one; yet in some the