84 FROM AN EASY CHAIR 



property, and reverently excavated and preserved, 

 whilst every fragment of significance found in the 

 excavations should be placed in a special museum at 

 Amesbury or Salisbury, under unassailable guardianship. 

 Year by year it has crumbled away. We owe the 

 sincerest thanks to Sir Edmund Antrobus for having 

 placed a light wire fence around the venerated relics, 

 and for putting a guardian in charge so as to arrest, 

 even at this latest moment, the final desecration and 

 destruction of this splendid thing by heedless ruffians. 

 The protection afforded is, nevertheless, insufficient. 

 The delay in examining everything on the spot and in 

 making all that remains absolutely secure is a national 

 disgrace. 



32. Alchemists of To-day and Yesterday 



The claim to have devised a secret process in virtue 

 of which sugar or charcoal placed in an iron crucible 

 and heated to a tremendous temperature is found on 

 subsequent cooling to contain large marketable diamonds 

 has a close similarity to the pretensions of the al- 

 chemists. It differs in the fact that ^ery minute 

 diamonds have actually been formed by a scientific 

 chemist (M. Moissan) in such a way, whilst the al- 

 chemists' search was for a substance the " philosopher's 

 stone,' 1 as it was called, which was never discovered, but 

 vas supposed to have the property, if mixed and heated 

 in a crucible with a base metal, of converting the latter 

 into gold. From time to time those engaged in this 

 search honestly thought that they had succeeded ; others 

 were impostors, and others laboured year after year, led 

 on by elusive results and dazzling possibilities. 



In England, after the true scientific spirit had been 

 brought to bear on such inquiries bv Robert Boyle and 



