68 THE LIFE AND LEGEND OF MICHAEL SCOT 



dreams which, made so many a furnace smoke, and 

 so many a crucible glow during the course of 

 centuries, 'in the vain hope of effecting an actual 

 transmutation of substance. 



Thus it was that in the first ages, long before 

 authentic record, in the dimness of early Egyptian 

 history, or of that still more ancient Pelasgic civili- 

 sation from which the pyramid-builders learned so 

 much, the germs of this science may already be 

 perceived. Only one source of genuine gold seems 

 then to have been known : the mines of Ophir. This 

 circumstance, by making the supplies of precious 

 metal small and uncertain, mightily encouraged the 

 art which taught men to counterfeit its appearance 

 in a colourable way. How this was done may be 

 judged of by the receipts themselves. The Mappae 

 Clavicula, for instance, has the following : ' To 

 make gold. Silver, one pound ; copper, half-a- 

 pound ; gold, a pound ; melt, etc.' Here indeed a 

 considerable proportion of the precious metal itself 

 was required, but there are other receipts which 

 dispense with any such admixture. It is said, for 

 example, that one hundred parts of copper and j 

 seventeen of zinc joined in a state of fusion with] 

 divers small proportions of magnesia, sal ammoniac, ! 

 quicklime, and tartar, yield an alloy which is fine] 

 in grain and malleable, which may be polished and 

 used in damascening just as if it were the pure- 

 gold that it has all the appearance of being. Such 

 then were the receipts which formed the hereditary 

 riches of the mighty clan of the Smiths. It is easy 

 to see how the famous 'powder of projection,' so 

 much sought in later times, was, in fact, but the 

 transfiguration of one of these formulae. 



