The Mysteryes of Nature and Art

The Mysteryes of Nature and Art by John Bates in 1634

This book inspired Isaac Newton, whom as a boy built some of the apparatus.

It is divided into four chapters:

• "The Firste Book" devoted to water includes such things as a number of weather glasses (barometers) and various clepsydra (water clocks).
• "The Second Booke", devoted to "Fire-workes" includes: sky rockets, "A receipt of a composition that will burne, and feed upon the water” and other "…Fireworkes, that operate upon the earth."
• "The Third Booke" is devoted to “Drawing, Limming Colouring, Painting and Graving”. Included are methods of duplicating existing pictures, "How to take the perfect draught of any printed or painted picture”, the creation of paints of specific color such as "a good yellow", a "velvet-blacke", and "to write a gold colour".
• "The Booke Of Extravagants" includes experiments and demonstrations of natural magic, household hints, and other oddities such as "How to make a light burne under the water, being a very pretty conceypt to take fish.” "To Make Iron Have The Colour of Brass", "To Make Copper Or Brasse Have The Colour Of Silver”, the making of invisible ink, solder, glues and many medicaments for ailments.

Editions

• 1634
• 1635
• 1654
• Facsimile edition of the 1634 edition by Walter J. Johnson (1977)

References

• SCIENTIFIC RECREATIONS A REVIEW OF SCIENTIFIC RECREATION LITERATURE by Bob Friedhoffer, 2002
• http://www.riley-smith.com/hamish/document_view.php?cat=1&doc=89