130 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [Fes. 27 
Geber describes in detail the aludel (or sublimatory of glass), 
the descensory, apparatus for filtration, and the water-bath. 
This latter instrument, however, is said to have a more remote 
origin, having been invented by an alchemist named Mary, who 
is identified with Miriam the sister of Moses; and the French 
name bain-marie is advanced as proof of this claim. 
Perhaps the earliest drawings of strictly chemical apparatus 
are those in the so-called manuscript of St. Mark, which is a 
Greek papyrus on the “sacred art,’ preserved in Venice and 
recently edited by Berthelot. This embraces among other 
treatises the Chrysopoeia of Cleopatra, which dates from the 
beginning of the eleventh century. It contains, besides magical 
symbols, figures of distilling apparatus, the chief being an 
alembic with two beaks, resting on a furnace, 
In manuscript No. 2327 of the Bibliothéque nationale, Paris, 
which bears the date 1478, are interesting drawings of furnaces, 
alembics, matrasses, receivers, etc., of glass, earthenware and 
metal. Some of them are copied from the manuscript of St. 
Mark. Professor Maspero, the Egyptian explorer reports the 
discovery by natives of the subterranean laboratory of an 
alchemist of the sixth or seventh century, at a point not far 
from Siout. This concealed laboratory contained a bronze 
furnace, the bronze door of another larger furnace, about fifty 
vases of bronze provided with beaks, some conical vessels 
resembling modern sandbaths, vases of alabaster, and gold foil 
of alow grade valued at over $350. In acorner of the dark 
chamber lay a heap of black, fatty earth that the workmen 
seized upon and carried off, saying they would use it to 
transmute copper; “ whiten’’ was their expression, but they 
evidenced a belief that this material was the ‘‘ powder of 
projection’’ capable of changing copper to silver. This was 
in 1885. The substance on examination proved to be 
impregnated with some compound of arsenic, which would of 
course ‘‘whiten” copper. 
The balance as an instrument of precision reached a high 
development under the Arabians as early as the twelfth century. 
The ‘Book of the Balance of Wisdom,’’ written in the year 
515 of the Hegira (1121-1122 A. D.) by al-Khazini describes 
minutely a water-balance of great ingenuity, and the specific 
gravity determinations of solids and liquids made by its aid are 
marvellously accurate. The author also describes a specific 
gravity flask of a practical make which he calls the ‘conical 
instrument of Abu-r-Raihan.’’ This treatise, with its illustra- 
tions of the balances and the flask, I analysed in a paper read 
to the Academy in 1876. (Am. Chem., May, 1876.) 
