the covering of anything with silver. It is usual to silver metals, wood, paper, &c. which is performed either with fire, oil, or size. Metal-gilders silver by the fire; painter-gilders all the other ways.

To silver copper or brass: 1. Cleanse the metal with aquafortis, by washing it lightly, and immediately throwing it into fair water; or by heating it red hot, and scouring it with salt and tartar, and fair water, with a small wire-brush. 2. Dissolve some silver in aquafortis, in a broad-bottomed glass vessel, or of glazed earth, then evaporate away the aquafortis over a chafing-dish of coals. 3. Put five or six times its quantity of water, or as much as will be necessary to dissolve it perfectly, on the remaining dry calx: evaporate this water with the like heat: then put more fresh water, and evaporate again, and, if need be, the third time, making the fire towards the latter end so strong, as to leave the calx perfectly dry, which, if your silver is good, will be of a pure white. 4. Take of this calx, common-salt, crystal of tartar, of each a like quantity or bulk; and mixing well the whole composition, put the metal into fair water, and take of the said powder with your wet fingers, and rub it well on, till you find every little cavity of the metal sufficiently silvered over. 5. If you would have it richly done, you must rub on more of the powder; and in the last place wash the silvered metal in fair water, and rub it hard with a dry cloth.