Pure silver almost always vegetates. Some traces of copper destroy this property, which is obviously due to the oxygen which the silver can absorb while it is in fusion, and which is disengaged the moment it solidifies. An excess of lead, by removing all the copper at an early stage, tends to cause the vegetation.
The brightening is caused by the heat evolved, when the button passes from the liquid to the solid state. Many other substances present the same phenomenon.
In the above operation it is necessary to employ lead which is very pure, or at least free from silver. That kind is called _poor lead_.
It has been observed at all times, that the oxide of lead carries off with it, into the cupel, a little silver in the state of an oxide. This effect becomes less, or even disappears, when there is some copper remaining; and the more copper, the less chance there is of any silver being lost. The loss of silver increases, on the other hand, with the dose of lead. Hence the reason why it is so important to proportion the lead with a precision which, at first sight, would appear to be superfluous. Hence, also, the reason of the attempts which have, of late years, been made to change the whole system of silver assays, and to have recourse to a method exempt from the above causes of error.
M. d'Arcet, charged by the Commission of the Mint in Paris, to examine into the justice of the reclamations made by the French silversmiths against the public assays, ascertained that they were well founded; and that the results of cupellation gave for the alloys between 897 and 903 thousandths (the limits of their standard coin) an inferior standard, by from 4 to 5 thousandth parts, from the standard or title which should result from the absolute or actual alloy.
The mode of assay shows, in fact, that an ingot, experimentally composed of 900 thousandths of fine silver, and 100 thousandths of copper, appears, by cupellation, to be only, at the utmost, 896 or 897 thousandths; whereas fine silver, of 1000 thousandths, comes out nearly of its real standard. Consequently a director of the Mint, who should compound his alloy with fine silver, would be obliged to employ 903 or 904 thousandths, in order that, by the assay in the laboratory of the Mint, it should appear to have the standard of 900 thousandths. These 3 or 4 thousandths would be lost to him, since they would be disguised by the mode of assay, the definitive criterion of the quantity of silver, of which the government keeps count from the coiner of the money.