100 TIMEHRI. 
culphurets, arsenic acid and metallic arsenic, which was — 
the second mercury of the Greek alchemists, and later _ 
the chlorides of mercury—sal ammoniac, &c. We des- — 
cribe this condensation of dry vapours now-a-days as~ 
sublimation. It requires special apparatus, which was — 
employed by the ancients and which gave rise tothe 
arabic aludel or subliming pot It is sufficient to note — 
this other branch of the subje&t, from which several - 
modern industries derive their origin—for although con- _ 
neéted with the study of distillation, it is foreign to the 
discovery of alcohol. ; oy 
“Heavenly things above, Terrestial things below.” — 
Such is the axiom by which the Greek alchemists desig=- — | 
nated produéts of distillation and sublimation. They — 
called the sublimated vapour which arose from below 
“divine,” they also called mercury “divine” because it 
issued on high from below, and the drops whichattachedto 
the lids of their boilers were equally called “divine.” — 
But as was their wont, the alchemists translated these — 
purely physical notions by symbols and a strange mys- 
ticism. Already DEMOCRITUS (that is to say the Al- 
chemist author who assumed that name) called the spheri- 
cal apparatus in which distillation of water was performed 
“Celestial beings.’’ The separation which these effeéted 
between the more volatile water and fixed materials 
is thus described in a passage of OLYMPIODORUS who 
lived in the beginning of the sth century. ‘The earth 
“jis captured after dawn still impregnated with the ~ 
* dew which the rising sun attraéts by his rays. She is 
“then as a widow deprived of her husband accord= — 
“ing to the oracle of APOLLO—by divine water | mean — 
‘“* the dew, the aerial water.” In the same way COMARIUS, 
