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Rh ingot stood all the tests that were applied to it by Porelius, the Warden of the Dutch Mint, and was found to be pure gold! We need scarcely add that the sceptical Helvetius became a firm believer in the transmutation of metals.

We dare not accept this strange story as a true one, though we cannot comprehend the motives that could have induced Helvetius to promulgate that which he knew to be false. In the present state of our knowledge, we regard lead and gold as distinct bodies, and not modifications of the same substance.

If the alchemists failed to discover the philosopher's stone, we must not conclude that their labours were fruitless. In seeking that which had no real existence, they found some inestimable treasures; for most of those acids, alkalies, and salts that are indispensable to the modern experimentalist were discovered hundreds of years ago by the alchemists.

"The philosopher's stone," says Baron Liebig, "for which the ancients sought with a dim and ill-defined impulse, was in its perfection nothing else than the science of chemistry. Is that not the philosopher's stone which promises to increase the fertility of our fields, and to ensure the prosperity of additional millions of mankind? Does not chemistry promise that instead of seven grains we shall be enabled to raise eight, or more, on the same soil? Is that science not the philosopher's stone