for Bacon to describe the method of refining the lately discovered saltpetre, without which his recipe would have been worthless; and he took advantage of the close similarity between the alchemical preparation of gold and the refining of saltpetre to conceal the real import of his tract. By the title of the last three chapters—“On the Method of Making the Philosopher’s Stone”—and by constantly harping on gold, he endeavoured to distract and deceive his ordinary readers, leading them to believe that he was writing about gold when he was really treating on saltpetre. The unnamed substance saltpetre, then, is the principal subject of Chaps. IX. and X., and our course is clear. We must treat these chapters as we should treat Col. Esmond’s letter were the brackets omitted[344]-we must make shift to insert them. We must bracket together the phrases and sentences relating to the real subject of these chapters, the familiar alchemical expressions relating to saltpetre. On doing so we shall find a connected and rational method of refining the salt. In the following reproduction of Chaps. IX. and X. I have used the Esmond brackets, but I have not thought it necessary to reprint _all_ the padding which connects them. All omissions, however, are shown by dots. No word of the bracketed phrases has been changed, altered, added, or suppressed, nor has the order of the words been altered. Nothing has been done but to indicate by brackets the misleading interpolations. CAP. IX. _De modo faciendi ovum philosophorum._