The claim to have devised a secret process in virtue of which sugar or charcoal placed in an iron crucible and heated to a tremendous temperature is found on subsequent cooling to contain large marketable diamonds has a close similarity to the pretensions of the alchemists. It differs in the fact that very minute diamonds have actually been formed by a scientific chemist (M. Moissan) in such a way, whilst the alchemists’ search was for a substance--the “philosopher’s stone,” as it was called, which was never discovered, but was supposed to have the property, if mixed and heated in a crucible with a base metal, of converting the latter into gold. From time to time those engaged in this search honestly thought that they had succeeded; others were impostors, and others laboured year after year, led on by elusive results and dazzling possibilities. In England, after the true scientific spirit had been brought to bear on such inquiries by Robert Boyle and the founders of the Royal Society in the later years of the seventeenth century, little was heard of “alchemy,” and the word “chemistry” took its place, signifying a new method of study in which the actual properties of bodies, their combinations and decompositions, were carefully ascertained and recorded without any prepossessions as to either the mythical philosopher’s stone or the elixir of life. But as late as 1783--only a hundred and twenty-five years ago--we come across a strange and tragic history in the records of the Royal Society associated with the name of James Price, who was a gentleman commoner of Magdalen Hall, Oxford. After graduating as M.A., in 1777 he was, at the age of twenty-nine, elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London. In the following year the University of Oxford conferred on him the degree of M.D. in recognition of his discoveries in natural science, and especially for his chemical labours. Price was born in London in 1752, and his name was originally Higginbotham, but he changed it on receiving a fortune from a relative.