The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-01-15
SOME SECRETS
 THAT ARE LOST Forefathers Could Do Things We Cannot Discover CLEVER AS WE ARE The Art of Egyptian Embalming Is Beyond the Ingenuity of Mod
 ern Science-Other
 Lost Arts
From Tit-Bits.

l LOli
 Taking into consideration the marvellous strides we have made in almost every branch of knowledge during the last two or three hundred years, 1t seems exceed ingly strange that our forefathers should have been able to do things which we find impossible, or next door to impossl- ble, and that we cannot discover secrets which were almost common knowledge hundreds upon hundreds of years ago But, despite the fact that the average modern man knows more than did the learned men of long ago, there are mys. teries of knowledge and science which our most advanced scientists cannot | solve.
 Thousands of years ago, for instance the Egyptians used to embalm bodies oi their dead kings and nobility so perfectly that the bodies are in wonderful preser- vation today, as may be seen at the British museum. Clever as we are in this age, we cannot do the same. The valua- ble secret Is lost and modern science can not recover the lost knowledge. We can, of course, and we do. embalm bodies, but only for temporary preservation, and, comparatively speaking, in most un- | satisfactory manner. Besides which are embalmed nowadays will not be preserved l for more than a few years at most; very balmed before the birth of Christ are now so perfect that the lines of their faces are still as clearly marked as when they | were first embalmed
 | Sheffield turns out the finest, hardest and most perfect steel the world pro- | duces. but even Sheffield cannot produce sword blade to compare with those the | Saracens made and used hundreds of sessed the machinery we have, nor had I the advantage of knowing so much about metals as we are supposed to know. A huge fortune awaits the man who dis covers the secret which enabled the Sara | cens to make sword blades so keen and 1 hard that they could cut In two most of | the swords used in our army today. | There are a dozen different methods of making artificial diamonds. but none of | the stones produced by these methods can | compare with those made of old French | paste, the secret of which is lost. So per | feet were paste diamonds that it was diff | fcult for even person with expert | knowledge of diamonds to tell that they were artificlally produced, whereas most of the modern artificial diamonds can easily be detected, and their durability is nothing like so great as the old paste da- monds: indeed good paste diamonds are I Al.~ II .1.- 1 Probably not one out of every 0,00t buildings standing in all parts of the world and built by modern masons vii
 still be standing 500 years hence. We dc not know how to put stones and bricks | together as the ancients did. and conse- quently the buildings we raise nowadays | are really mere temporary structures and | will be in ruins when the ancient build | ings of Greece and Italy, which were | built thousands of years ago, are in as good conditions as they are now. The secret is not in the bricks or the stone, but in the cement and mortar, neither of | which essentials can we make as the an- | cents made them.
 l In modern buildings the cement and nor tar are the weakest points, in buildings which the Romans and Greeks raised | thousands of years ago the cement and mortar are the strongest points, and hold | good while the very stones they bind to- | gether crumble away with age. We can not with all our science make such ce- ment and mortar, and, therefore, we can not build such buildings as the ancients | raised.
 Chemistry, one might imagine, is the | science which has, perhaps, made the greatest strides during the last five or | Siy dpcadaE modern oh not compound such dyes as were com monly used when the great nations of to- day were still unborn. Now and again 1t | happens that searchers after antiquities come across fragments of fabrics which were dyed thousands of years ago. and they are astonished by the wonderful richness of the colors of the cloths. which, despite their age, are brighter and purer than anything we can produce
 Modern artists buy their colors ready made and spend large sums of money on pigments with which to color their canvases. The pictures of modern artists
 will be colorless when many of the works of ancient masters are as bright as they are today. Just as the secret of dyeine has been lost, so has the secret of pre- serving the colors of artists paints. Yet the secret was known to every ancient artist, for they all mixed their own col ars.
 How to make durable ink is another great secret we have lost. Look at any letter five or ten years old, and you will probably notice that the writing has faded to a brown color and is very indis- tinct. Go to any big museum and you will find ancietn manuscripts the writing | of which is as black and distinct as if the manuscripts were written the day before II yesterday.
 The secret of the glassblowing and tint ing is not yet entirely lost; there are still a few men who can produce glass work equal to the things of this kind which the anctents turned out hundreds of years ago. But the average glass manufacturer cannot produce anything that could at all compare with some of the commoner articles the Egyptians and, later. the founders of Venice manufactured. and those who still hold the ancient secret guard 1t so closely that it will probably die with them and be added to the long list of things in which our ancestors beat us hollow.