78 HISTORY OF SCIENCE. 



affairs I spent upwards of ten thousand three hundred crowns in mere 

 experiments, and, in fact, I was reduced to such poverty that I had 

 but little money left ; and yet I was more than sixty-two years of age. 

 I was obliged to leave my native country, and trusting in God's mercy, 

 which is never wanting to those who work with a good will, I with- 

 drew for privacy to Rhodes, and there still sought to find something 

 that might bring me comfort." Bernard, however, soon met with " un 

 grand clerc et religieux" who influenced him to spend more time and 

 money in this endless search. This attempt occupied him for three 

 years, and cost him five hundred crowns. " In this way," he says, " all 

 was lost." Yet once again did he devote himself to the study of 

 nature and the perusal of the old authors, and this time, he declares, 

 the attempt was crowned with complete success. He at length dis- 

 covered the secret of the philosopher's stone ! It was concealed in a 

 maxim often quoted by the masters of the mysterious art : " Nature 

 s'esjouit de sa nature, et nature contient nature" This, interpreted into 

 plain English, would mean You can make gold only out of ^old. The 

 latent satire of Bernard's account of his alchemical researches is per- 

 ceptible in the quaint manner he fulfils his promise to the reader of 

 revealing the whole secret of the production of gold. He tells a long 

 story of a king who went to bathe in a fountain which was reserved 

 for royalty alone. As the king divests himself of his clothing, the 

 robe is given to Saturn, who keeps it for forty days; the vest to 

 Jupiter, who keeps it for twenty days, etc., etc. "It was an aged 

 priest," says our author, " who told me all these particulars about the 

 king's fountain. I said to him, ' What is the use of this ? ' And he 

 said to me, ' God made one and ten, a hundred and a thousand, and 

 two hundred thousand, and then multiplied the whole by ten.' And 

 I said to him, ' I do not understand.' And he said to me, ' I will tell 

 you no more, for I am tired.' And then I saw he was weary, and I 

 was very sleepy myself ! " 



A German alchemist, belonging to the fifteenth century, is ECK OF 

 SALZBACH, who first experimentally demonstrated a fact which after- 

 wards became important in the development of chemical theories. It 

 is, that when a metal is calcined, the weight of the calx is greater than 

 that of the metal. The non-chemical reader may at once understand 

 the import of these terms by a familiar instance. He has, doubtless, 

 some time or other, seen lead melted in an iron pot or ladle placed on 

 the fire, and probably he has noticed that the surface of the fused metal 

 becomes speedily covered by a dull film. When this film is skimmed 

 off, the silver-bright surface of the lead is seen only for an instant, for 

 the freshly-exposed surface is again quickly overspread by the film, and 

 -thus if the films be successively removed, the whole of the lead may be 

 converted into a dull un-metallic-looking substance. This is termed 

 in the language of the old chemistry a calx, and the fact of its weighing 

 more than the original metal would not be difficult to prove. Eck's 



