have a discrepancy of 700 years, and a clear confounding of 
Zozimus of Alexandria with his namesake of Panapolis. 
Suidas attributes chemical works to the former, but we must 
remember that the word xnpela does not occur before the eleventh 
century, A.D. The director of the Bibliothéque Nationale,* ina 
recent letter for which we have to thank him, writes as follows :— 
“Ta Bibliothéque Nationale ne renferme aucun manuscrit grec 
de Zosime de Panapolis qui puisse attribué a une époque 
antérieure au XIII. Siécle. Le plus ancien de ceux qu'elle 
posséde ne remonte pas plus loin que cette date.” Everything 
tends to prove that the MSS. were not only written, but com- 
posed at a period posterior to the fifth century. The fanciful 
titles of some of them show us that their authors adopted 
any name they pleased; thus we have ‘‘the Epistle of Isis, 
queen of Egypt, and wife of Osiris on the sacred art, ad- 
dressed to her son “Horus,” in which we find a solemn oath 
dictated to Isis by the angel Amnaél, who swears by Mercury 
and Anubis, by Tartarus, the Furies, and Cerberus, and by 
the dragon Kerkouroboros. The whole thing is plainly a 
blending of eastern and wes‘ern thought : personages of Egyptian, 
Greek, and Roman mythology, with angels of the Talmud, and 
genii of Arabic lore. We are glad to find that M. Hoefer 
breaks freely away from the too confident Olaus Borrichius, as 
to the authenticity of Hermes Trismegistus. He admits that the 
books which bear his name are spurious, and concludes that 
their author, “vivait probablement a l’époque critique du Chris- 
tianisme triomphant et du paganisme 4 l’agonie.” But if we 
_take this as the time of Constantine the Great, we must venture 
to attach a later date to these writings. 
We recently had an opportunity of examining the MS. in the 
Bibliotheque Nationale, attributed to Zozimus and to the fifth 
century; a MS. which, from its frequent mention in both ancient 
and modern works on the history of chemistry, possesses special 
interest. It is entitled ‘‘Zozimus on Chemical Instruments and 
furnaces, and on the Holy Water” (Zwolwou wep) dpxdvwv kat 
kapulvav Kai rep) Tov Oclov vdaros), and it is a well-preserved MS. 
of the thirteenth century, written on vellum. The few drawings 
which it contains are asserted to have been taken by the author 
Fic. 7.—An Alembic, and Symbols from Greek MSS. on Alchemy. 
from a temple at Memphis. The Alembic (/ in the accompanying 
woodcut, Fig. 7) is copied from this MS., in which also the line of 
symbols (a) is found. These symbols occurred in almost every 
Greek MS. on alchemy which we examined, but we could find 
no clue to the curious porcupine-like animal. The symbol ¢ is 
clearly of astronomical origin, and is not often met with in later 
works. The MSS. are for the most part devoid of figures, and 
not so full of symbols as later alchemical treatises. 
We have endeavoured to prove (a) that no reliable date can be 
assigned to existing Greek MSS. on alchemy, and (A) that the 
accepted date is too early. Even if we could prove that a 
man named Zozimus, livingin the fourth century, wrote treatises 
on alchemy, we could not use the existing MSS. for any exact 
purpose connected with the history of science with safety ; for, 
since we have no such MS. earlier than the tenth or eleventh 
centuries, it would be quite impossible to determine whether 
* This library has so often changed its name of late, that we think it 
necessary to mention that we mean the library in the Rue Richelieu, which 
is called by old writers the Bibliothégue du Rot sometimes the Bibliothégue 
Royale, lately the Bibliothégue Impériale, still more lately the Bibliothéque 
Communale, now the Bibliothégue Nationale., Juncker in his Conspectus 
Chemia, in speaking of various writers on alchemy cites ‘‘ Zozimus Panapo- 
lites celeberrimus et magni cognomen adeptus, cujus varia scripta extant in 
Bibliotheca Regia Parisiensi,” 
additions had been made during transcription. The facts 
simply these :—There exist in various parts of the world G 
MSS. on alchemy, none of which are older than the tenth cent 
Many of these bear the names of mythical personages of Egypti 
mythology, some of ancient Greek philosophers, some of peo! 
who are supposed to have lived in the fourth or fifth centur 
A.D. When we remember that no ancient writer makes ment 
of alchemy or chemistry, that the word xnyela is first used in 
eleventh century, and when we further bear in mind the condi 
of the intellectual world in the fourth and fifth centurie: 
think we may well admit that further evidence is necessa) 
fore we can assert that alchemy arose in the fourth century 
deed we are of opinion that, in spite of all that has been writ 
on the subject, there is no good evidence to prove that alch 
and chemistry did not originate in Arabia not long prior to th 
eighth century, A.D. 
G. F. RoDWELL 
ON THE ECLIPSE EXPEDITION, 1871* — 
IL \ 
I MUST now state very briefly some of the results of out 
work ; and first, the certain results, —- 
We were able to make out the structure of the corona. We 
know all about the corona so far as the structure of its loy 
brighter strata, that portion, viz., which I referred to in my 
ture last year as being visible both before and after totality, is 
concerned. You may define it as consisting of cool prominence: 
that is to say, if you examine a prominence any day wit! 
waiting for an eclipse, and then go to an eclipse and examine 
lower portion of the corona, you will find the same phenom: 
minus the brightness. You find the delicate thread-like f 
ments which you are now all so familiar with in prominence 
filaments which were first thrown on a screen in this theatre ; 
cloudy light masses, the mottling, the nebulous structure, are 
absolutely produced in the corona, as far as I could see it with 
telescope with an aperture of 6} inches ; and I may add that t 
portion some five minutes round the sun reminded me forcibly 
parts of the nebula of Orion, and of that surrounding » Arg 
depicted by Sir John Herschel in his Cape observations, 
We have shown that the idea that we did not get hydr 
above 10 seconds above the sun is erroneous; for we obta! 
evidence that hydrogen exists to a height of 8 or 10 minut 
least above the sun; and I need not tell you the extreme 
portance of this determination. One of the proofs we hay 
that lies in this diagram, showing the observations made by Pro! 
Respighi, armed with an instrument the principle of which 
hope you are now familiar with. 
Just after the sun disappeared Prof. Respighi employed 
prism to determine the materials of which the prominences wh 
were then being eclipsed were composed ; and he got the pron 
nences shaped out in red, yellow, in blue, and in violet light ; 
background of impure spectrum filling the field, and then as | 
moon swept over the promineaces these images beceme invisibi 
he saw the impure spectrum and the yellow and violet 
gradually die out, and then three bright and broad vizgs pain 
in red, green, and blue, gradually form in the field of view of hi 
instrument ; and as long as the more brilliant prominences wer 
invisible on both sides of the sun he saw these magnifice 
rings, which threw him in a state of ecstacy, And well 
might. 
These rings were formed by C and F, which shows us 
hydrogen extends at least 7 minutes high, for Aad we not 
dealing with hydrogen we should have gota yellow ring as * 
because the substance which underlies the hydrogen is more 
brilliant than the hydrogen itself, and in addition to the red 
ring and the blue ring, which indicate the spectrum of hydroge 
he saw a bright green ring, much more brilliant than the others, 
bult up by the unknown substance which gives us the Kirch- 
hoff line, 1474. : 
Now at the time that Prof. Respighi was observing the 
beautiful rings by means of a single prism and a telescope 
some four inches aperture, some 300 miles away from him— 
was at Poodocottah and I was at Bekul—I had arranged 
train of prisms which you see here so that the light of the sun 
should enter the first prism, and after leaving the last one should 
* A Lecture delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, Mond ay; 
March 22, 1872, by J. Norman Lockyer, F.R,S. (concluded from p. 5 
