The Red Cloud chief., 1878-10-10
'TransmutntiOn.

Raymond ,Lully performed II trans
mutation miracle before King Edward
l.. of England. by changing 10000
pounds of quicksilver into a CORES
ponding lump of solid gold, and the
first rose mobiles were coined out of this
identical Lullcan gold.
The tcllers 81 big stories are. rs a
rule, equally reckless and ignorant. and
lack most Of them, ~ lcast-the fac
ulty of calculation and the power of
computation; aud there Is. in truth. no
bigger siory-tcllcr to he found than his
tory. Fifty thousand pounds Of quick
silver forms n respectable mass, no,
quite So readily procured in Il lump. IL
would ill something like the space of
tifty-cight cubic frct-a bulk certainly
rather difficult to operation in the time
If the frs, Edward. even by so distin-
guishcd and accomplished an adept n
the great Lully. Easing the c%alcula-
ton in the rough upon the respective
specific gravitic, of the two metals. the
transmutation would have produced
something like -, iOO, 900 Of our money
an enormous u,u in the days Of Ed
ward /. The real truth of the matter
was that the ingenious Raymond, per-
frrtly aware of one OF the most valuable
properties of quicksilver, vnadc up, in
presence Of the ignorant and credulous
king, and his equally ignorant and
crcdulous courticrs, Il mixture of cop
per. tin. lead, etc, with auro-mercurial
| amalgam, obtaincd by dissolving II Ger
tain amount of gold in quicksilver, and
subjected the mixture to "a strong heat,
which process would. of course. ulti-
mate in the production of just rs much
pure gold rs the mercury had held in
amalgamation.
This was u most simple trick indeed.
but quite sufficiently ingenious for the
limited intelligence Of the people of the
dark ages. The king was much rs.
founded and deeply chagrined when he
afterwards in vain attempted to initiate
l.ully's ''simple process OF course he
omitted to put in the gold. However,
~ Lully had generously made the ex'
pertinent gratis, no great harm was
done.
What could have been Lully's motive
in thus selling the king Of England:
Well, perhaps the great adept was 4
humorist in his way, who might have
dearly liked to chuckle in imagination
over poor disappointed Longshanks'
long face.
Wise" Queen Elizabeth, and tn,
wise men Of her court were done in q
somewhat similar, though certainly 8
little o ingenious fashion, by q trav'
cling monk adept, who dipped u knit,
and tile-ostentatiously used by hin
previously in some laboratory opera
tions--in presence of the queen and hel
court, into a wonderful tincture, which
m~iraculously converted the part dipped
into solid gold. The knife WAS permit
ted to remain In n collection Of curios
stiles of Queen Elizabeth until the lat
ter half of the last century, when tn,
famous mechanician, Getfroy, publicl,
exposed the cheat before the French
Academy of Sciences. The trick wa
performed simply with n knife and f!e
both consisting Of two halves a stee
one and u gold one-deftly soldered to
gether, and coated all over by an inge
NOUS process with a thin film of steel
highly polished, and presenting thus t,
the eye u uniform surface of steel. Thi
film was, of course, easily dissolved b,
the nitric acid tincturc, leaving the sol
id gold exposed to view. The trick WA