TRANSMUTATION OF THE METALS 83 



liancy, the compounds of tin being called jovial salts. The 

 dull, leaden color of Saturn, with his apparently heavy and 

 slow motion, seemed to fit him for association with lead, and 

 we still have the saturnine ointment as a reminder of old 

 alchemical times. 



Of these metals gold was supposed to be the only one 

 that was perfect, and the belief was general that if the 

 others could be purified and perfected they would be 

 changed to gold. Many of the old chemists worked faith- 

 fully and honestly to accomplish this, but the path to wealth 

 seemed so direct and the means for deception were so 

 ready and simple, that large numbers of quacks and charla- 

 tans entered the field and held out the most alluring induce- 

 ments to dupes who furnished them liberally with money 

 and other necessaries in the hope that when the discovery 

 was made they would be put in possession of unbounded 

 wealth. These dupes were easily deceived and led astray 

 by simple frauds, which scarcely rose to the level of amateur 

 legerdemain. In the "Memoirs of the Academy of 

 Sciences" for 1772, M. Geoffroy gives an account of the 

 various modes in which the frauds of these swindlers were 

 carried on. The following are a few of their tricks : 

 Instead of the mineral substances which they pretended 

 to transmute they put a salt of gold or silver at the bottom 

 of the crucible, the mixture being covered with some pow- 

 dered crucible and gum water or wax so that it might 

 look like the bottom of the crucible. Another method was 

 to bore a hole in a piece of charcoal, fill the hole with fine 

 filings of gold or silver, stopping it with powered charcoal, 

 mixed with some agglutinent so that the whole might look 

 natural. Then when the charcoal burned away, the silver 

 or gold was found in the bottom of the crucible. Or they 



