Zosimus, who lived in the beginning of the fifth century, is one of the first in Europe to describe the powers of this stone, and its capacity for making gold and silver. The alchemists pretended to derive their science from Shem, or Chem, the son of Noah, and that thence came the name al_chem_y, and _chem_istry. All writers upon alchemy triumphantly cite the story of the golden calf in the thirty-second chapter of Exodus, to prove that Moses was an adept, and could make or unmake gold at his pleasure. It is recorded that Moses was so wroth with the Israelites for their idolatry, “that he took the calf which they had made and burned it in the fire, and ground it to powder, and strewed it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it.” This, say the alchemists, he never could have done had he not been in possession of the Philosopher’s Stone; by no other means could he have made the powder of gold float upon the water. At Constantinople, in the fourth century, the transmutation of metals was very generally believed in, and many treatises upon the subject appeared. Langlet du Fresnoy, in his _History of Hermetic Philosophy_, gives some account of these works. The notion of the Greek writers seems to have been that all metals were composed of two ingredients, the one metallic matter, the other a red inflammable matter which they called sulphur. The pure union of these substances formed gold; but other metals were mixed with and contaminated by various foreign ingredients. The object of the Philosopher’s Stone was to dissolve and expel these base ingredients, and so to liberate the two original constituents whose marriage produced gold. For several centuries after this the pursuit flagged or slept in Europe, but it reappeared in the eighth century among the Arabians, and from them re-extended to Europe. We are not going to trace the history of alchemy _downwards_, and see one student after another wreck his genius and time on this rock, nor see what use was made of the belief in it by impostors to enrich themselves at the expense of the credulous--we will follow the superstition _upwards_, and track the stone to the spring of the belief in its supernatural powers. The search for the stone will take us through strange country, give us many scrambles; but, if the reader will condescend to accompany me, I believe I shall be able to bring him to the very real and original stone itself. The following story I give as it was told to me by some Yorkshire mill lasses, in their own delightful vernacular. I forewarn the reader that the golden ball in the story is the same as the Philosopher’s Stone, as we shall hear presently: