368 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO I676-7. 



A Letter from Christianus Adolphus Balduinus* to Mr. Oldenburg, Secretary of 

 the Royal Society. Translated from the Latin. N^ 131, p. 788. 



I should immediately have acknowledged the favour of the letter you wrote 

 me last year, had I not thought it right to wait until I had perfected the method 

 of preparing my phosphorus. This I have but lately done; and I now send you 

 a specimen thereof, inclosed in a gilt silver box ; which I request you to have 

 the goodness to offer, with all humility and respect on my part, as a small pre- 

 sent to his Majesty, as founder and patron of your Society; and to the illustri- 

 ous President, Council, and Members thereof This phosphorus contains the 

 real spark, yea the most secret soul (imo secretissima anima) of the fire and 

 light of nature, consequently the innate and invisible fire of philosophers ; at- 

 tracting magnetically the visible fire of the sun, and afterwards emitting and 

 diffusing in the dark the splendor of the same : This happens from hence, viz. 

 that the signature of the sun is contained in that universal magnet from whence 

 this phosphorus is prepared ;-}- as indeed is sufficiently apparent from the ac- 

 companying representation of the phenomenon, which lasts several days. J 

 But although I have thus succeeded in getting possession of the universal mag- 

 net, I shall not desist from the farther prosecution of my chemical labours, as I 

 am in expectation ere long of deriving from this source still greater and more 

 important discoveries; concerning all which I shall not fail to transmit an ac- 

 count to your illustrious Society, as soon as I shall have completed my experi- 

 ments. 



Hayn, Sept. 1, 1676. 



Note hy Mr. Oldenburg. — ^This present was according to the tenor of this 



* Christian Adolphus Baldwin was a magistrate of the town of Hayn or Grossenhayn in Saxony, 

 and was much devoted to the then fashionable pursuit of alchemy. For some purpose or other he 

 had dissolved a quantity of chalk in nitrous acid, and evaporated the compound to drj'ness in a strong 

 heat. On breaking the glass retort in order to get at the residuum, some fragments thereof fell upon 

 the floor of the laboratory, and remained there until the next day ; when they attracted the notice of 

 our alchemist by their luminous appearance in the dark. Thus was the discovery of this chemical 

 phenomenon wholly accidental. — ^This phosphorus is a nitrate of lime. Besides the above letter, a 

 communication concerning it was published in the Ephemerid. Natur. Curios, for 1674- ; but the most 

 ample account of it is given in the author's treatises entitled Aurura superius et inferius Aurae 

 superioris et inferioris hermeticum j et Phosphorus hermeticus sen Magnes Luminaris, l673 et 1675. 



f In the above reflections we have a tolerable specimen of the absurd mode of philosophizing among 

 the chemical or rather alchemical writers at this period of time. — Note by the Translator. 



+ This phenomenon exhibits, in a glass vessel, various figures of the sun, some greater some less, 

 which the substance employed by the author assumed, to the no small diversion of the spectators. — 

 Original. 



