1877.] The Philosopher's Stone. 83, 
whom we are told that they had possessed the art of making 
gold from the earliest times. While we may look with wonder 
at the almost incredible accounts of their wealth, and still doubt 
the fact of their having made gold artificially, yet we are com- 
pelled to accord to them a high state of civilization, and the 
possession of as much knowledge in metallurgy specially consid- 
ered as we ourselves own. We must also admit that in this 
branch of acquired learning they were in some respects our supe- 
riors, particularly in the treatment of copper. With all the evi- 
dences of their knowledge in this branch of science we may not 
consistently laugh down the effort made by them to produce 
gold from other metals, for this problem was suggested to an in- 
telligence in connection with metallurgical operations fully equal 
to if not superior to our own. 
So far as any large accumulation of gold is concerned, we can 
reasonably infer that its aggregation did not call for any great 
display of knowledge, for gold is always found in a metallic state, 
and its melting and working can be performed by the simplest of 
metallurgical operations. All we have to do to account for such 
a condition of accumulation is to suppose that some great source 
of supply existed of which all traces have now disappeared. We 
know that there were two avenues open for the collection of gold, 
the Ural Mountains and the sands of Africa. But they were also 
rich in silver, and to such an extent that they made their house- 
hold furniture of it, also using it in connection with gold, to form 
the caps of\ columns that adorned their homes. Silver, unlike 
gold, is seldom found in a metallic state, and it isin fact separated 
from the ore only by a complicated effort of metallurgical chemis- 
try, and one that requires much more than ordinary melting skill. 
It was amongst a people thus skilled in the working of metals 
that something had been found to suggest the idea that gold 
could be produced by transmutation, and to learn if we can what 
there is in nature likely to prompt such a problem is the object 
of the present paper. Gold is ordinarily found in river gravels 
and sands, as well as at the bottoms of gulches, whence the 
greater bulk of the gold produced has been obtained. It is 
usually separated from the lighter sands and gravels by washing, 
to accomplish which invention has produced about the same appli- 
ances the world over. > 
Placer gold, as alluvial gold is called, is well understood to be 
not an original condition of the metal, but a secondary one, and 
me which has found a new place of repose some distance from _ 
: 3 
VOL, Xi. — no. 1 
