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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIII. No. 849 



Arabians malleable glass. There is a kind of 

 glass spoken of there that, if supported by one 

 end, by its own Tveight in twenty hours would 

 dwindle down to a fine line, and that you could 

 curve it around your wrist. 



Cicero said that he had seen the entire ' ' Iliad, ' ' 

 which is a poem as large as the New Testament, 

 written on a skin so that it could be rolled up in 

 the compass of a nut-shell. Now, this is imper- 

 ceptible to the ordinary eye. You have seen the 

 Declaration of Independence in the compass of a 

 quarter of a dollar, written with glasses. I have 

 to-day a paper at home, as long as half my hand, 

 on which was photographed the whole contents of 

 a London newspaper. It was put under a dove's 

 wing and sent into Paris, where they enlarged it 

 and read the news. This copy of the ' ' Iliad ' ' 

 must have been made by some such process. 



Pliny says that Nero the tyrant had a ring with 

 a gem in it, which he looked through, and watched 

 the sword play of the gladiators — men who killed 

 each other to amuse the people — more clearly than 

 with the naked eye. So Nero had an opera-glass. 



So Mauritius the Sicilian stood on the promon- 

 tory of his island and could sweep over the entire 

 sea to the coast of Africa with his nauscopite, 

 which is a word derived from two Greek words, 

 meaning "to see a ship." Evidently Mauritius, 

 who was a pirate, had a marine telescope. 



The French who went to Egypt with Napoleon 

 said that all the colors were perfect except the 

 greenish-white, which is the hardest for us. They 

 had no difficulty with the Tyrian blue. The 

 burned city of Pompeii was a city of stucco. All 

 the houses are stucco outside, and it is stained 

 with Tyrian blue, the royal color of antiquity. 



But you never can rely on the name of a color 

 after a thousand years. So the Tyrian blue is 

 almost a red — about the color of these curtains. 

 This is a city all of red. It had been buried 

 seventeen hundred years; and if you take a shovel 

 now, and clear away the ashes, this color flames 

 up upon you, a great deal richer than anything 

 we can produce. 



I feel reasonably sure from what I know 

 of the history of science that the main 

 points made in this lecture were not true 

 in "Wendell Phillips's time. I know they 

 are not true to-day. 



To recapitulate : the causes of a belief in 

 lost arts appear to be the veneration of 

 antiquity, the belief in the mysterious and 



occult, inaccuracies in and inaccurate 

 readings of ancient texts, reaction against 

 present-day egotism, the use of unsuitable 

 materials by ancient peoples and the em- 

 phasis laid upon ancient skill by half 

 accurate writers. 



No one could wish to detract from the 

 great, the skilful and the beautiful works 

 of the ancients. All we can desire is a 

 proper and clear understanding of their 

 accomplishments. 



Long before the way was prepared for 

 an approach to chemistry as a science, 

 many were the chemical facts known and 

 used and many the chemical arts and 

 manufactures which arose and flourished. 

 The foundations of many of our greatest 

 chemical industries were securely laid 

 long before the science of chemistry lent its 

 aid. The industries of cement and plaster, 

 glass, ceramics, pigments, oils and fats, 

 varnishes and lacquers, sugar, fermenta- 

 tion, textiles, paper, dyeing, leather, glue 

 and various metallurgical industries are 

 some of those which were very well de- 

 veloped before the advent of scientific 

 chemistry. Indeed, the science of chemis- 

 try has found and still finds some of its 

 richest materials in these very industries. 

 What can be accomplished by patient 

 manual skill and dexterity is amazing, and 

 it must be conceded that the adoption of 

 exact mechanical processes in our times has 

 lessened the necessity for such skill in 

 many directions. It is true also that many 

 ancient peoples and many of the less me- 

 chanical modern ones have applied manual 

 dexterity to their arts in such a way that 

 we marvel at the results. But it is difficult 

 to find a case where similar application to- 

 day would not yield a similar result. 

 Nothing can be considered lost unless it be 

 the demand for and desire to produce 

 works of a certain kind. 



Again it is true that some arts and 



