Can Gold Be Made?

"With tho gods and the chomists all things are possible." said the illustrious chemist Hofman. Nor does the statement seem mucti ovordrawn when one considers the slupendous results obtained during the last quarter of a century by chemical invostigators. The extraordmury researches of Newlands Mengelojeff and Meyor have shown that the atom c weightsof the cbemical elementa of which all matter is oomposod oocupy definitu and unchangeable positions in a geometrie figure, and that the proporties of matter may be considered as mathematical functions of numbors. The-e discoveries threw open for investigaron a territory that contains treasures boyond the power of the imagination to describe. Weisbach, following these invostigators, split up the metal didymium into two othor elements, proving - what had long been suspected by cheraists - that some of the heavy metáis could be resolved into simpler elements had we the requisito forcé wherewith to break them up; and, as the conclusive demonstration of bis discovery, he then reunited the nevv elements - phraesodymium and nemodymium - and gave us baok the compound substance - didymium. Crookes published a series of brill'.ant experiments on the metal yttrium, similarly breaking up this element into a number of substances, which he reunited again to produce the original yttrium. Last comes Greenwald, who infers from spectroscopie investigations that all our elements can be reduced to but two primal forms oí matter. Now that this field has been opened to investigation there can be no limit asslgned to the discoveries that may follow. The forces at our control are Ijrowing daily more powerful and more manageablo. Víctor Meyer has been able to beat iodine until it exists in its atomic condition. What the next dition will be no one can