868 
STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
“If Mr. Ransome has not found the philosopher’s stone, he has at least pro. 
duced a stone worthy of a philosopher, and which promises to become the 
stone of the ages. For it appears to have elements of great durability, and 
it certainly possesses every other quality desirable in building stone, whether 
for structure or ornament. Although five years are not five centuries, 
chemistry has analyzed even the tooth of time, and can produce within the 
period of a comparatively brief experiment, results identical with those of 
ages of atmospheric corrosion and disintegration. Mr. Ransome’s stone has 
been boiled, and roasted, and frozen, and pickled in acids, and fumigated 
with foul gases, with no more effect than if it had been a boulder of granite 
or a chip of the blarney stone. It has been boiled and then immediately 
placed on ice, so as to freeze whatever water might have been absorbed, and 
ithqs been also roasted to redness, and then plunged in ice water, but with¬ 
out any sign ot cracking or softening, superficially or otherwise. Nor does its 
durability rest alone upon such evidence as this, for it is of the simplest 
chemical composition ; and chemistry and geology alike testify to the dura¬ 
bility, if not to the indestructibility, of a stone which is nearly all silica, 
like flint, an onyx, and agate, and jasper. It has no oxidizable coostituent; 
for silica, or silicic acid, is already oxidized, and thus it is unalterable in airj 
and as the new stone is almost impermeable, it will suffer little, if any, injury 
from moisture or frost. 
“And how marvelous, for its simplicity and beauty, is the process by which 
this stone is made ! Some toiling mason or other, hewing in the quarry or 
in the builder’s yard, must have wished, before now, that stone, like iron, 
might be melted and run in moulds, even though his own occupation were thus 
at an end. Did he ever, when by the sea-shore oi by a sand-pit, think of ce¬ 
menting indissolubly together the countless millions of grains into solid rock? 
Mr. Ransome, no mason, however—unless he be, as he may be for anything 
we know, a member of the mystic brotherhood—did think of this. And he 
tried every cement he could lay his hands to, and did not succeed. The sand 
became little else than mortar by such sticking as he could effect. But he 
found out, at last—and we are speaking of a time more than twenty years 
ago—that the best sandstones were held together by silicate of lime. And 
so he set himself to work to produce this substance, indirectly, from flints, 
of which plenty could be found for the purpose. But the flints had to be 
liquified first, and how could this be done ? Not by heat, nor would caustic 
soda touch them, so the chemist said. Flints might be boiled in a caustic so¬ 
lution for a week together, so long as the boiler was an open one, and lose 
very little by the operation. But by-and-by Frederick Ransome made one of 
the most unexpected discoveries in chemistry, viz., that when boiled in a 
caustic solution, under presmre^ flints would melt almost like tallow before 
the fire. But we are not about to give the long history of the invention. 
With flint soup, or silicate of soda as a liquid, the question was, what other 
liquid would, in mixing with it, turn both into an enduring solid ? What 
other liquid would turn both into silicate of lime, the substance he was seek¬ 
ing ? When he found that chloride of calcium (in solution) would, when 
