Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/840

820 gold as there was of silver. A second medal was prepared in the same way.

"They also took a silver medal, filed down one half of it on either side, without touching the other half, till they reduced it to about the thickness of a playing-card. Then, taking half of a medal of gold, they split it, and reducing the two parts in the required proportions, adjusted the outside parts over the silver core, preserving the proper arrangement of the designer. They then had a whole medal, half silver and half gold, but with the gold part stuffed with silver. This, they said, was a silver medal which had not lain long enough in the elixir, and had only been partly transmuted.

"Half of a third medal was superficially gilded with an amalgam of gold, and represented a piece which, having been merely dipped into the elixir, had only begun to turn.

"When this game was played, the golden parts of the three pieces were whitened with mercury, so as to look as if they were all silver. To make the deception more complete, the performer, who should' have a knack for conjuring, exhibited three genuine silver pieces that had not been tampered with, and permitted the audience to examine them. Taking them back, he slyly substituted his prepared pieces for them; fixed these in his glasses, poured in as much of his elixir as suited him, and withdrew them at the lapse of the designated intervals of time. He threw them into the fire and left them there long enough to drive away the mercury with which the gold was masked. Then he took them out, looking as if they were half of silver and half of gold; but with the difference that, in cutting the parts that seemed to be of gold, one was merely gilded on the surface, another was gold filled with silver, and the third was gold all through.

"Chemistry furnished these tricksters with other most subtle means of carrying out their deceptions. It was also possible to introduce another, lighter metal into gold, which, while reducing its weight to that of an equal volume of silver, would not change its color, or separate from it in any part of the process."—Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from La Nature.

very curious features of language are exhibited in Dr. Leitner's book on the Hunzas of Dardistan. The substantive can not be used without the personal pronoun; as if we could say "my heart," "thy heart," or "his heart," but not "heart" by itself. The plurals of many feminine nouns are masculine, and vice versa. In the verb "to be" or "to become," as well as in numerous other verbs, there are different plurals for men, women, animals, etc., and the latter are again subdivided according to sex. Objects also are distinguished into male and female, according to their fancied stronger or weaker uses.