4. An universal ferment, or a matter, which being applied to any seed, shall increase its fecundity to infinity. If, for example, it be applied to gold, it shall change the gold into the philosopher’s stone of gold,— if to silver, into the philosopher’s stone of silver,—and if to a tree, the result is, the philosopher’s stone of the tree; which transmutes every thing it is applied to, into trees. The origin and antiquity of Alchymy have been much controverted. If we may credit legend and tradition, it must be as old as the flood; nay, Adam himself, is represented by the Alchymist, as an adept. A great part, not only of the heathen mythology, but of the Jewish and Christian Revelations, are supposed to refer to it. Thus SUIDAS will have the fable of the Philosopher’s Stone, to be alluded to in the fable of the Argonauts; and others find it in the book of MOSES, &c. But if the æra of the art be examined by the monument of history, it will lose much of this fancied antiquity. The learned Dane, Borrichius, has taken immense pains to prove that it was not unknown to the ancient Greeks and Egyptians. Crounguis, on the contrary, with equal address, undertakes to show its novelty. Still not one of the ancient poets, philosophers, or physicians, from the time of Homer till four hundred years after the birth of Christ, mention any thing about it. The first author who speaks of making gold, is Zosimus the Pomopolite, who lived about the beginning of the fifth century, and who has a treatise express upon it, called, “the divine art of making gold and silver,” in manuscript, and is, as formerly, in the King of France’s library. The next is Æneas Gazeus, another Greek writer, towards the close of the same century, in whom we find the following passage:—“Such as are skilled in the ways of nature, can take silver and tin, and changing their nature, can turn them into gold.” The same writer tells us, that he was “wont to call himself χρυσοχοος, gold melter, and χημευτης, chemist.” Hence we may conclude, that a notion of some such art as Alchymy was in being at that age; but as neither of these artists inform us how long it had been previously known, their testimony will not carry us back beyond the age in which they lived. In fact, we find no earlier or plainer traces of the universal medicine mentioned any where else; nor among the physicians and naturalists, from Moses to Geber the Arab, who is supposed to have lived in the seventh century. In that author’s work, entitled the “_Philosopher’s Stone_,” mention is made of a medicine that cures all leprous diseases. This passage, some authors suppose, to have given the first hint of the matter; though Geber himself, perhaps, meant no such thing; for by attending to the Arabic style and diction of this author, which abounds in allegory, it is highly probable, that by man he means gold; and by leprous, or other diseases, the other metals; which, with relation to gold, are all impure.