540 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of calx of gold/' and which, though it smelled like aqua fortis, 

 and tasted like vitriol, he insisted was " only raine water of the 

 autumnal equinox exceedingly rectified, very volatile " ; an asser- 

 tion which led Evelyn to the conclusion that " Sir Kenelm was an 

 arrant mountebank." Some time afterward, mentioning Digby's 

 account of Lady Selenger's antipathy for roses, which he said she 

 had to that degree that " laying but a rose upon her cheek when 

 she was asleepe, it raised a blister," Evelyn remarks, " But Sir 

 Kenelm was a teller of strange things." 



Yet Digby had in Evelyn a not incredulous listener. In the 

 winter of 1G52 there lived in Paris, in extraordinary splendor and 

 seeming wealth the source of which was not apparent an im- 

 postor, who nearly succeeded in selling Evelyn and his scientific 

 friends a pretended secret for multiplying gold; but they dis- 

 covered before the bargain was completed that the man was an 

 egregious cheat. Not long afterward Evelyn visited Mark An- 

 tonio, a celebrated artist in enameling, from whom he heard 

 strange tales concerning a Genoese jeweler, who, according to 

 Antonio, "had the greate Arcanum, and had made projection 

 before him severall times. He mett him at Cyprus travelling 

 into Egypt, on return from whence he died at sea, and the secret 

 with him, that else he had promised to leave it to him " a legacy 

 which the enameler believed would have enabled him to manu- 

 facture gold. Mark Antonio also told a marvelous story about a 

 dwarfish person whom he saw come into a goldsmith's shop in 

 Amsterdam, and ask the master to melt him a pound of lead, 

 which, being done, the visitor threw into the crucible of molten 

 metal a pinch of powder that he carried in the hollow pommel of 

 his sword, and, after a few moments, pouring out a gold ingot 

 from the crucible, he carried it off, saying, as he left the shop, 

 " Sir, you will be paid for your lead in the crucible," where, sure 

 enough, the goldsmith found four ounces of good gold ; but he 

 could never hear of the little transmuter of metals again, though 

 he sought him throughout the city. " This," says Evelyn, who 

 had seen so many wonderful new inventions during his travels in 

 France and Italy, that he was in a continually expectant frame 

 of mind, and almost ready to believe that projection powder was 

 a scientific discovery "this Antonio asserted with great obtesta- 

 tion, nor know I what to think of it, there are so many impostors 

 and people who love to tell strange stories as this artist did, who 

 had been a greate rover and spoke ten different languages." In 

 May, 1653, Evelyn mentions in his diary the death from apoplexy 

 of his "servant Hoare," meaning his private secretary, who 

 " wrote those exquite severall hands," his illness being, it was 

 supposed, caused by " tampering with mercury about an experi- 

 ment in gold." The same year he records the receipt from Mon- 



