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Doc. 151.] 415
REPLY FROM FAHLUN .
and a greater feeling of security, on so delicate and diffi
cult an undertaking as that which is involved in the change
of a process which has been elaborated during several
centuries, and which has become the rule in the smelting
of copper; in the establishment of which process many fingers
have been burned, so that those engaged in it are unwilling
to follow mere speculations and abstract rules, in preference to
those that have been taught and demonstrated by experience
itself. Moreover, several hundred persons have been engaged
year after year in working out this result, and they have
worked in it faithfully and industriously, as those only can
work , whose whole sustenance and well-being, and every
thing else depending on success, have been involved in it.
Yet, notwithstanding all this, and notwithstanding that this
Board of Mines and its officers have been troubled by Fran
cisco Maria Levante,* Schumejer,7 Kunkell von Löwenstern,#
Neithard and Clari, § Orschall and Commissary Mejer, and
by several others with new projects and the carrying of them
out, and although all these have been unsuccessful, SO
that this place has acquired a distaste for, and objection to,
all those now called new -fangled miners - still it would not be
considerate or impartial of this Board to seek to obstruct
the institution of such a useful trial, as is offered by Assessor
Swedenborg, inasmuch as what lies hidden in nature and art
never be completely fathomed. The Board of Mines
therefore desires all good luck and God’s speed to this en
terprise, and willingly assents to the first point in the memorial,
viz. to lend the Assessor all the assistance that he can justly
desire and claim .
can
* He was an Italian who arrived in Sweden in 1685, offering to the
government a better process for obtaining the copper from the ore . His
process is discussed by Swedenborg in his Opera Philosophica, & c,
Vol. III, p. 42.
+ Joh. Wendelin Schumejer, and a certain Heldeberg, both Germans,
offered to do the same thing in 1689, but failed likewise. Their process
is described by Swedenborg at p. 44 of the same volume of the same work.
See Note to Document 97.
§ Joh. Dan. Neithard, and Nicol. Clari, likewise from Germany, promised
to change iron immediately into copper; they are mentioned by Sweden
borg on p. 45, of his Opera Philosophica Vol. III.
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