THE ALCHEMICAL STUDIES OF SCOT 95 



of the substances most frequently chosen to become 

 the subject of the transmuter's art. In the Alpu- 

 jarras, a mountainous district lying under the soft 

 climate of Granada, grew plenty of these rare herbs 

 employed in alchemy, as they were also in the 

 medicine of the Arabians. Ibn Beithar of Malaga 

 describes them in his botanical thesaurus, and 

 it is said that after the Moors had lost that fair 

 kingdom their herbalists, even as late as our 

 own times, made yearly journeys from Africa to 

 gather in these hills the plants which ancient 

 science taught them to value high]y. But the 

 days of the ' ultimo sospiro del Moro ' were yet in 

 the far future, and meanwhile Michael Scot in his 

 laboratory at Toledo could easily command all these 

 treasures for the purposes of experiment. Nor was 

 it in vain that he fanned his fires, and watched the 

 metals melt and the menstruum distil in the process 

 of the lesser or greater mystery. If he never saw 

 Venus blush into the true substance of Sol, or 

 Mercury, the fickle and obstinate, congeal into 

 a veritable Luna, his chemical practice, and the re- 

 cords in which he has embodied it, mark none the 

 less true and significant a moment in the history 

 of scientific progress. 



