INTRODUCTION. 3 



back to his little workshop, and began immedi- 

 ately to experimentize upon the mineral. 



It appears most probable that Cascariolo looked 

 upon the sulphate of baryta, or heavy- spar, for 

 such was the object of his curiosity, as a metallic 

 ore, and supposed that by heating it with charcoal 

 in a hot fire, he would be able to extract a metal 

 perhaps gold ! His hopes in this respect were 

 not realized, but he nevertheless succeeded in ob- 

 taining one of the most curious of substances, 

 a body which, to use the words of an old physicist, 

 " absorbs the rays of the sun by day, to emit them 

 by night." 



At this period there was at Bologna a well- 

 known alchemist, Scipio Begatello, who had ren- 

 dered himself remarkable by his attachment to the 

 art of gold-making ; and in the year 1602 the cob- 

 bler brought to him the product of his experiments, 

 showed him the substance produced by calcination 

 (and which he called by the mystical name of lapis 

 Solaris), and endeavoured to convince Begatello 

 that from the weight of the stone which had fur- 

 nished it, from its power of attracting and retain- 

 ing the golden light of the sun, this shining sub- 

 stance would doubtless be fit for converting the 

 more ignoble metals into gold the sol of the al- 

 chemists. He showed it also to Maginus, a dis- 

 tinguished professor of mathematics, who, being 

 no adept, did not keep the matter a secret, as Be- 



