President's Address. 7 



does not seem to have been very prolific in chemical dis- 

 covery, we come to the time of the German alchemist, 

 Albertus Magnus, who was born in 1193, and who became 

 Bishop of Eatisbon about sixty years after. This worthy 

 bishop, we are told, was not only a theologian and alchemist, 

 but also a magician, and many wonderful stories are related 

 describing his powers in the magical art. Albertus followed 

 Geber in his idea that metals were composed of mercury and 

 sulphur, and he also seemed to believe that the different 

 metals were produced by the different combinations of these 

 two substances. This, of course, he could not prove, so he 

 did not do much good in that direction. He certainly, how- 

 ever, made a decided step in advance when he proved experi- 

 mentally that sulphide of mercury was composed of sulphur 

 and mercury. This he accomplished synthetically by causing 

 a mixture of these two substances to sublime. He also 

 showed a very simple, but quite effectual mode of separating 

 the two metals, gold and silver. His plan was simply to 

 treat the alloy or mixture of the two metals with nitric acid, 

 when the silver, being soluble in that liquid, disappeared, 

 leaving the gold behind in an insoluble state. 



Albertus was a somewhat voluminous author, and among 

 other subjects on which he employed his pen, he wrote on 

 that never-failing one, the philosopher's stone, and also on 

 the origin of metals. 



As a magician he seems to have outstripped his professional 

 brethren of later years, as among many other feats of magic, 

 he is said, in conjunction with a pupil, to have made a statue 

 of brass, which he succeeded in animating by means of his 

 elixir. This statue, it seems, was for a time very useful as a 

 domestic servant, but unfortunately, like some of its modern 

 flesh and blood counterparts, it was very talkative. Its 

 excessive loquacity, indeed, proved its ruin; for on one 

 occasion it so annoyed a mathematical pupil, who was deeply 

 engaged in studying a proposition, that he took a hammer 

 and smashed it to atoms, to the great grief of Albertus. 



Contemporary with the great German alchemist just 

 noticed was Eaymond Lully, who lived in Spain, and who, 

 we are aware, was a voluminous writer, but who does not 



