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pletely separate the silver; and it has often happened, thatwhen fine gold, melted with silver, was submitted to cer-tain operations, and afterwards parted, the portion of silverwhich the aqua fords left in the gold, has been takenfor an augmentation of the gold itself. Of this I knew aremarkable instance in a process which was some yearsago referred to my examination, and whose success wasaverred to have been such, that it was offered as a verylucrative operation, and a considerable price demandedfor the communication of it: the gold, after it had passedthrough the tedious process that was to enrich it, andhad been parted from the silver by weak aqua fortis, ac-cording to the directions, weighed indeed notably morethan the pure gold employed : but on reducing it to itsformer purity by solution in aqua regis, I found it reducedat the fame time to its former quantity. It is probablethat many of those, who have been most sanguine intheir expectations of gain from alchemical operations, hadno other foundation than these misunderstood kinds ofexperiments ; which having once persuaded them thatthey could make gold, they might naturally concludethat it could be made in any quantity. I shall onlyfurther remark on this head, that if a part of the sub-stance of any metal was by any operation tranfmutableinto gold, a part more would be in like manner transmu-table by a repetition of the operation, and this successive-ly, so long as any part of the metal remained entire andperfect, or so long as it retained the properties which ithad at first : a process of this kind would be decisive, butsuch a process has not yet been made known.

The destruction of gold is affirmed by the alchemiststo be more difficult than its production. This point alsohas been eagerly prosecuted, not only on account of itsbeing interesting as an object of philosophy, but on ac-5 count