SCIENCE. 



metals combined and used for mechanical and military 

 purposes. The same precedence of these metals con- 

 tinued, locally at least, and, so far as can be discovered, 

 down to historic times. The Roman historians record it. 

 Weapons, armor, and tools of bronze, hard enough for 

 cutting granite, abound among the remains of primitive 

 antiquity, and have given to that vague epoch the title of 

 the age of bronze : the so-called stone age being of no 

 particular order in time, but rather the universal age of 

 savageism, from the earliest vagrants of the human race 

 down to the recent aborigines, so-called, of our own 

 country. 



The disposition to try what will come of mixing 

 materials may be assumed as a prominent native factor of 

 invention in all ages, and as especially prominent in the 

 infancy of knowledge, when every material and every prop- 

 erty of materials was a mystery only to be experimented 

 on. Nay, the bare factor of accident would be sufficient 

 to insure the mixture of various metals, ores and earths 

 in the very first experiments. Copper and tin coming 

 out first, as bronze, at once stimulated and assisted an 

 eager search for further discoveries. They built the 

 furnaces and quarried the fuel that ultimately brought to 

 light the treasure concealed in dull brown rocks of iron 

 ore. The more facile ore of zinc (in the presence of cop- 

 per) if accidentally at hand, would enter earlier, or, possi- 

 bly^ earliest, into the kaleidoscopic series of the smelter's 

 products, with the most exciting brilliancy of effect ; 

 promising coveted gold without limit, and preparing, per- 

 haps, the first sad catastrophe of inventive expectation 

 unrecorded in any patent office or prospectus of incorpor- 

 ation. Down almost to the 19th century (1781) brass 

 was made by mixing the zinc ore directly with copper ; 

 and down to the 16th century this had been done, from 

 the earliest times, without a suspicion that the magical 

 stone was anything but one out of hundreds of like 

 mysterious minerals, among which a potent and supreme 

 " philosopher's stone" might yet be found. No wonder 

 that infinite possibilities of metallic splendor and precious- 

 ness stretched out before the imaginations ot the alchem- 

 ists in the vast field of unexplored mineral combinations 

 before zinc was discovered as a metal and the nature and 

 scope of the alloys were defined. 



To Ihese limitations, however, modern philosophy and 

 discovery have given a new and again undefinable exten- 

 sion. They have not revived alchemy, but they have re- 

 vived a more trustworthy probability, and a more philoso- 

 phical pursuit of radical improvement in the character of 

 the alloys. In general it may now be stated that the labors 

 of new experimenters with the new lights and resources 

 already promise to popularize little less than the beauty 

 and incorruptibility of the precious metals in the equipage 

 of common life and arts, and in combination with some of 

 the qualities hitherto inseparable from a coarse, dull and 

 corruptible texture, as in iron. 



The discovery of nickel and German silver were marked 

 steps in the direction of the new era, yet failed to ap- 

 proximate it ; as we see in the fact that nickel has proved 

 hitherto but a material, and German silver a basis, for the 

 temporary and unsatisfactory varnish of beauty called 

 plating. Nickel was found too refractory a metal to be 

 worked solid lor purposes of general utility or even of or- 

 nament. Qualified by other metals, as in German silver, 

 the same refractory temper still rendered it impracticable, 

 except in proportions too small to impart its clear color 

 and splendor, with its clean, resistant texture and temper- 

 ature, to the composition formed. Every workable sub- 

 stitute for silver betrayed, more or less, a constitu- 

 tional sickliness, of jaundiced tint, sweaty feel, and cor- 

 rupt odor. No actual progress was possible until the dis- 

 covery that the refractory quality of nickel was due to its 

 absorption', when in a molten state, of certain gases 

 which might be chemically removed. This discovery was 

 made and published in Germany, two or three years ago, 

 with the magnesium method of purifying and reducing 



the metal to malleability. In practical results, however, 

 we know of little to report as yet from the other side of 

 the Atlantic ; whether it be on account of expensiveness 

 in the process, or inability to form alloys of this in itself 

 too expensive metal that are satisfactory at once in cost 

 and in qualities. One suggestion of possibly great im- 

 portance comes from the German nickel manufacturers, 

 in the comparison of the purified metal with Bessemer 

 steel, with which it is represented to be almost identical 

 in practical properties ; raising even a suspicion in some 

 minds whether the two may not be modifications of one 

 metal, or of some protean metallic element, of unconjec- 

 tured range. The whole range of metals, indeed, would 

 not be more extreme, nor, perhaps, more difficult of prac- 

 tical reconstruction than that of carbon. The speculations 

 and partial successes of Mr. Lockyer in the direction of a 

 theory of unity, or rather of duality, and convertibility, in 

 matter, are here forcibly recalled to mind ; suggesting 

 that all its families may be the progeny of two universal 

 parent substances, such as hydrogen and oxygen. What 

 if the truth of Nature, after all, lay, metaphorically, near 

 to the surface and to the mystical vision of the old child- 

 like sages, who saw in the " elements " all-generative 

 powers, as Science finds in one of them (fire) a form, and 

 as represented in the Sun the prime form perhaps, of all 

 organic energy ? What if Science should yet discover 

 that the alchemists themselves had a true, if not practi- 

 cable, end in view ? Man's dominion in Nature is too 

 marvellous in its present beginnings, for anything to be 

 incredible as to its future perfection. 



On the American side the modern philosopher's stone has 

 beensought of late years, with sanguine ardor. A number 

 of different fortunes of respectable size have been sunk 

 in the melting-caldrons, out of which have arisen a suc- 

 cession of bright apparitions, only to prove intractable for 

 use, or turn the old inevitable sickly cast after brief shin- 

 ing. None of our practical experimenters, so far as I am 

 aware, have struck the true lead, the purification of nickel, 

 with one exception. No other man of our day, probably, 

 has given so many years of metallurgical labor so hard 

 and practical, together with study so profound, to the as- 

 similation ot the necessary alloys for gold and silver, to the 

 appearance and properties of those metals, as Mr. 

 Charles Wessell of New York. What our chemists may 

 have accomplished, or seemed to accomplish, with a few 

 ounces of metal in the laboratory, it is of less importance 

 to inquire than would be generally supposed. Such 

 achievements, whatever they might be, would have no 

 necessary value, or even validity, in practice : none pos- 

 sible, indeed, unless there were given with them a prac- 

 tical metal-mixer uniting scientific genius and research 

 with the technical knack and stalwart physical capacity 

 for handling metals by the ton in the furnace, to the pur- 

 pose for which he intends them. Mr. Wessell, indeed, 

 meets this description ; but it would be needless to tell 

 any manufacturer of brass or German silver, that no other 

 known counterpart exists. The men they depend on for 

 this service work solely by blind knack, which they catch 

 and lose alternately in the most unaccountable manner, 

 contributing a material percentage to the market cost of 

 these common compositions by their own inevitable per- 

 centage of uncertainty, failure, and destruction of ma- 

 terials. 



Charles Wessell, the metallurgist of the Holmes & Wes- 

 sell Metal Company of New York, came to this city 

 from Rome, in this State, a modest working man, whom 

 the future famous discoverer of a genuine popular rival 

 to the precious metals must make haste to head off, if in- 

 deed it be not already too late. It is thirteen years since 

 Mr. Wessell began his metallurgical experiments and in- 

 ventions, by undertaking successfully to electro-deposit 

 a combination of three metals which most chemists would 

 even now pronounce it impossible to hold together under 

 the battery. A very distinguished chemist to whom the 

 product was submitted, gave this assurance in absolute 



