818 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



was an amateur alchemist, received by mail a little box containing 

 two packages of powder, one red and the other white, with direc- 

 tions for using them. He was thus able to enjoy the pleasure of 

 himself changing lead into " gold " and " silver." From the " gold " 

 he struck a few hundred ducats, bearing on one side his name and 

 effigy, and on the other the lion of Hesse and his initials, E. L. 

 From the " silver " he struck a hundred thalers bearing his name 

 and likeness on one side, and on the other the inscription " Sic pla- 

 cuit Deo in tribulationibus " (" Thus it has pleased God in tribula- 

 tions "), 1717, with the lion of Hesse and his initials, surrounded by 

 four crowns. 



These operations made so much stir that the Academy of Sci- 

 ences was moved by it; and in 1722 the chemist Geoff roy was 

 charged to demonstrate to the learned company that these extraor- 

 dinary achievements were a pure fraud. In the report, which he 

 read on the 15th of April, he said : " Since the main intention of 

 the operators is usually to show gold or silver in the place of the 

 minerals which they pretend to transmute, they sometimes use 

 double crucibles or cupels, or they put salts of gold or silver in 

 the bottom of them; they then cover the bottom with a paste 

 made by mixing crucible-dust with gum- water or wax; doing it 

 so that this false bottom shall seem to be the real bottom. At 

 other times they put gold or silver dust in a hole made in a piece 

 of charcoal; or they saturate charcoal with solutions of those 

 metals and then reduce the mass to a powder, in order to project 

 it upon the substances which they are going to transmute. 



" They use rods with hollowed ends containing in the cavities 

 gold or silver filings, and stopped up with sawdust of the same 

 wood. Stirring their molten matter with these rods, the sticks 

 burn, leaving in the crucible the metal with which they have 

 been charged. In an endless variety of ways they mix gold or 

 silver with the substances with which they work. A small quan- 

 tity of gold or silver will not show in a large quantity of such 

 metallic snbstances as the regulus of antimony, lead, or copper. 

 Salts of gold and silver can very easily be mixed with salts of lead, 

 antimony, and mercury. Grains or nuggets of gold and silver 

 can be inclosed in lead. Gold may be whitened with quicksilver 

 and made to pass for tin. The collection of gold and silver from 

 the substances with which they have been mixed may be made to 

 pass for transmutation. 



"All that goes on in the hands of these people should be 

 watched. For the aqua fortis or aqua regia which they use is often 

 already charged with solutions of gold or silver. The papers in 

 which they wrap their chemicals are sometimes loaded with salts 

 of these metals ; and the pasteboards they employ may conceal 

 such salts in their thickness. Glass has been known to come out 



