354 



SCIENCE. 



LATENT SOLAR LIGHT.* 



Translated from the French, by the Marchioness Clara Lanza. 



A remarkable stone, which plays quite an important 

 role in ancient histoiy, is the carbuncle, literally trans- 

 lated, glowing coal, which shines and glimmers in the 

 dark. Lucien relates that in the Temple of Hieropolis 

 there is the statue of a Syrian goddess in whose fore- 

 head is placed a stone called lychins or lamp. This 

 stone was moderately brilliant during the day, but at 

 night it illuminated the temple from one end to the other. 

 Shakespeare, in Titus Andronicus, says, while speaking 

 of Prince Bassianus' body : 



" Upon his bloody finger, he doth wear 

 A precious ring, that lightens all the hole, 

 Which, like a taper in some monument, 

 Doth shine upon the dead man's earthy cheeks." 



It is said that formerly dwarfs and gnomes wore one 

 of these stones upon, their heads as miners carried their 

 lamps. We have likewise been told that certain birds 

 knew where to find them and make use of them to 

 illumine their nests. The tendency which has been 

 remarked in birds, notably crows, to pick up brilliant 

 objects, has naturally given rise to numerous legends 

 and anecdotes among all people, and it is declared that 

 in America numbers of birds light up their nests by 

 placing therein fire-flies. The carbuncle has stiil another 

 secret property, for it renders the object it adorns, invisible 

 both to man and beast. The question may therefore 

 properly arise, how did man happen to discover this 

 treasure which birds alone were apparently able to dis- 

 tinguish ? Poetic fancy, we may say, has answered this 

 query. The invisibility is caused by a ray of light which 

 blinds the eye. A mirror, however, does not become so 

 easily dazzled, and if, while walking along the edge of a 

 brook, you perceive the reflection of a nest in the water, 

 while with your naked eye you are unable to discover 

 it, you may be sure that the stone is there. The legend 

 of the carbuncle first arose in India, the land of precious 

 stones, and it was founded upon the remarkable capacity 

 possessed by many diamonds and a few rubies of shin- 

 ing for a long time in the dark after being exposed a few 

 moments to the sun or merely broad day-light. This 

 phenomenon appears to have been studied and experi- 

 mented upon tor the first time in Europe somewhere 

 about the seventeenth century, by the celebrated natu- 

 ralist, Boyle. In India, however, the knowledge of it 

 can be traced b ick to the furthest antiquity, as can be 

 proved by referring to a passage in the famous drama 

 called Sakuntala, whose author certainly lived long be- 

 fore the beginning of our era. The passage is this : 



"Among the just whose souls enjoy the most complete 

 repos£, there is a hidden radiance, which illumines them 

 with its faint glimmer. Thus shines the precious sun 

 stone, as soon as an outward ray of light strikes it." 



At Bologna, which, as we know, is a well-known 

 scientific centre, there lived at the beginning of the 

 seventeenth century, a shoemaker named Vincenzo Cas- 

 cariolo, who like many other men of his time, determined 

 to discover primitive matter in the shape of the philoso- 

 pher's stone, and by means of it, change the vilest and most 

 worthless metals into pure gold. He had already exper- 

 imented with fire and water upon all possible substances, 

 organic and inorganic, when in 1604, some writers say 

 161 2, he tound, one day upon Mount Paderno, close to 

 his own dwelling, a grayish-white stone, of a fibrous 

 structure, and whose weight being considerable, made 

 him suspect some unusual property. He calcinated a 

 portion of it with some coal, and night falling while he 

 was engaged in the operation, he saw with utter stupe- 

 faction, that the entire contents of his crucible, shone 

 with a ruddy glow, although the furnace had become 



♦This article was originally written in German and published a short 

 time ago in the Gat Icnlaube. 



quite cold. With trembling hands he seized the stone, 

 not doubting in the least that it was the famous philo- 

 sophical one, of which he had so long been in search — 

 still less did he doubt, when he observed afterwards, 

 that only the fragments which were exposed to the sun 

 or broad daylight were brilliant. Alchemists in those 

 days called the sun a golden planet. In their works they 

 employed an identical sign to designate both the lumin- 

 ary and the metal, and they firmly believed that the rays 

 of the former penetrated the latter, as water is soaked 

 into a sponge. This mysterious connection is clearly 

 indicated in a brief opuscule discovered during the mid- 

 dle ages, no one knows exactly where, and of which 

 there exists now only a Latin translation, the original, 

 however, doubtless having been found in some Egyptian 

 tomb. It is called " The Emerald Table of Hermes 

 Trismegistus," and among other things it is therein stated 

 that " the father of the Philosopher's Stone, is the sun, 

 its mother the moon. Separate the earth from fire, and 

 you will obtain the wonder of the world, all shadows 

 will flee before you." These obscure words were ap- 

 plied to the new luminous body called phosphorus, and 

 the phosphorescent stone of Bologna, excited the young 

 disciples of chemistry, to the highest pitch of interest. 



Although this substance did not at once realize the 

 great expectations set abroad concerning it, and not- 

 withstanding the fact that it was obliged to renounce 

 entirely the role of philosopher's stone, it nevertheless 

 caused its discoverer to make a considerable sum of 

 money, for men seeking knowledge and instruction came 

 from all countries to Bologna, and purchased this natural 

 curiosity to a great extent. Poets likewise wrote lauda- 

 tory Latin verses to the now celebrated shoemaker, com- 

 paring him to Prometheus who stole fire from heaven, 

 and placed it on the earth. Enormous enthusiasm was 

 manifested everywhere for this remarkable stone. Vol- 

 umes were written about it, and it was even stated that 

 the sun and moon were nothing more than huge masses 

 of Bologna phosphorus. For a long time it was thought 

 I that the stone existed nowhere but at Bologna, but later 

 It was discovered that it was composed principally of 

 spar or sulphate of baryta, which was to be found in 

 numerous places. 



Alchemists gathered fresh hope in 1674, when Chris- 

 tian Balduinus, intendant at Grosenhain in Saxony ob- 

 tained an analogous luminous body by the calcination of 

 nitrate of lime. He called it hermetic phosphorus or 

 solar gold, and in several works he declared that this 

 was indeed the veritable philosopher's stone whose 

 properties he was engaged in studying. The only Ger- 

 man Naturalistic Society at that period was the " Leopold 

 Academy of Natural Curiosities," and this organization 

 received the new inventor into their midst under the 

 \ honored title of Hermes, which has ever remained in the 

 I chemical world. Since then, it has always been supposed 

 that the hermetic or philosophical stone must be lumin- 

 1 ous, and Dickinson, physician to Charles II, of England, 

 relates in his "Old Physical Truths" (1702) that Noah, 

 whom he regarded as one of the ancestors of hermetic 

 science, had placed a large gleaming stone of some sort, 

 called zohar in Hebrew, upon the top of his ark, so that 

 he might have perpetual light during the night, and that 

 moreover the scientific knowledge of this same Noah had 

 caused him to nourish every animal in the ark with an 

 j extract made from the meat or plant which the creature 

 preferred, thus economizing space and doing away with 

 j the necessity of removing from the ark such bones, leaves, 

 skins, etc., which might otherwise have been there. 



Chemical researches advanced with singular activity ; 

 for about the same time that Balduinus was performing 

 i his experiments, Brand, ot Hamburg, an obstinate in- 

 I vestigator discovered a substance which produced lumin- 

 ! ous vapor, and condensed itself into yellow drops that 

 I shone in the dark without being exposed to the sun. 

 1 Professor Kirchmayer, of Wurtemburg, announced to 



