The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1878-10-03
TransnlutatiOn.

RAYMOND LULLY performed trans
mutation miracle before King Edward
L., of England, by changing $4,000
pounds of quicksilver into a CORE
spending lump of solid gold, and adds
that the first rose mobiles were coined
out of this identical Lullean gold. Tho
tellers of big stories are, as a rule,
equally reckless and ignorant, and
lack-most of them at least-the facul-
ty of calculation and the power of COM
putation; and there is in very truth no
bigger story-teller to be found than his
tory. Fifty thousand pounds of quick
silver forms a respectable mass not
quite SO readily procured in a lump. It
would fill something like space of
fifty-eight cubic feet-a bulk certainly
rather difficult to operate upon in the
times of the First Edward, even by so
distinguished and accomplished an
adept as the great Lully. Basing the
calculation in the rough upon the re-
spective specific GRANTEES of the two
metals, the transmutation would have
produced something like $2,5OO,OO0 of
our money-an enormous sum in the
days of Edward l. The real truth of
the matter was that the ingenious Ray
mond. perfectly aware of one of the
most valuable properties of quicksilver,
made up, in the presence of the igno-
rant and credulous King. and his equal
ly ignorant and credulous courtiers, a
mixture of copper, tin, lead, etc., with
an auro-mercurial amalgam, obtained
by djssolving a certain amount of gold
in quicksilver, and subjected. the MKT
ure to strong heat, which process
would of course, ultimately end in the
production of just as much pure gold
as the mercury had held in amalgama-
ton. This was a most simple trick,
indeed, but quite sufficiently ingenius
for the limited intelligence of people
in the dark ages. The King was much
astounded, and deeply chagrined when
he afterward in vain endeavored to i'm
itate Lully's "simple process" Of
course he omitted to put in the gold.
However, as Lully had generously made
his experiment gratis, no great harm
was done. What could have been Lul-
ly's motive in thus selling the King
Of Englandp Well, perhaps the great
adept was humorist in his way, who
might have dearly liked to chuckle in
Imagination over poor disappointed
Longshanks' long face. "Wisc" Queen
Elizabeth and the wise men of her court
were done in somewhat similar,
though certainly little more ingenious
fashion, by a travelling monk adept,
who dipped knife and file-ostenta-
tiously used by him previously in some
laboratory operations-in presence of
the Queen and her court, into a won
derful tincture, which miraculously
converted the part dipped into solid
e I'D. The knife was permitted to re-
lain in collection of curiosities of
Queen Elizabeth until the latter half of
the last century. when the famous
mechanician Geoffroy publicly exposed
the cheat before the French Academy
of Sciences. The trick had been per
formed simply with knife and file,
both consisting of two halves-a steel
one and a gold one-deftly soldered to-
gether, and coated all over by an in
genious process with thin film of
steel. highly polished, and presenting
thus to the eye a uniform surface Of
steel. This film was, of course, easily
dissolved and removed by the nitric
acid tinSture, leaving the solid gold ex-