CHEMISTRY AND ALCHEMY. 



'75 



are worth recording, because they seem to be the starting-point of chemistry 

 in ancient times. It may be added that a manuscript work of Zosimus, a 

 Greek historian of the fifth century, mentions the Xr)^a, an apocryphal work, 

 in which the giants, sons of the children of God (the descendants of Seth), 

 who are represented in the Book of Genesis as intermarrying with daughters 

 of the race of Cain, registered their discoveries in the arts and the extent of 



Fig. 125. The Gallic Vulcan. After a Celtic Monument discovered beneath the Choir of Notre- 

 Dame, Paris, in 1711, and now preserved in the Cluny Museum. 



their scientific knowledge. According to Scaliger, it was from the " Chema " 

 that the mother science derived its name of chemistry. 



It is misleading, however, to quote, as has been done, the evidence of a 

 Greek romance, the " History of Theagcnes," composed in the sixteenth century, 

 though it has been ascribed to Athenagoras, who is said to have written it 

 about 176 A.D. The chemical operations described in this apocryphal novel 

 merely serve to show that, in the first century of the Christian era, the 



