RECIPE FOR COLD.

King Country Chronicle, Volume XX, Issue 2066, 13 January 1925, Page 3

RECIPE FOR COLD.

SEARCH THE FOUNDATIONS OF SCIENCE. Since the first fallen angels found brides on earth and taught them alchemy men have been trying tot turn base metals into gold, says tho New York "World." The Greeks tried it, the Arabs tried it, the priests of Egypt thought they had, the secret in the days of Ptolemy the Firs*. Now a modest item appearing in the. papers suggests that New York University will have its turn. Amperage enough to "crack" an atom of quicksilver will attempt to eliminate the eightieth electron from billions of atoms and leave a residue of gold. "Wo believe," says one of the experimenters, "that the effort will bo successful." A few strands run through all history and tie to our start. One of the stoutest of them is man's tireless conviction it hat creatures so superior as we are to! the quadrupeds must bo wise enough to find a way of makinggold. AK ages have grubbed in chemicals to find the secret. There were the Greeks, who thought that if base metals could be boiled down to their essence it would bo possible to boil them up to gold again. There wero the Arabs who were hunting for philosopher's sjtoaies 500 years before Mohammed, and Alexandrians who thought a pinch of salt in sjnlphur would make gold. A dozen empires must have fallen since the first Chaldean confided to his friends that he knew how ifc was done. There has never been a search since men began to think which broke so many hearts and ate up so much effort. Yet ojur age is the last to say that tho time of many disappointed men was wasted. Tf modern science can pick up the trail to-day with all the eqpipment of modern laboratory, if it can bring quartz lamps and electric power into piay, whom has it to thank if not the early alchemists? Blundering to find one special metal, they produced a science. There is not a stick of forged siteel on Lower Broadway or a blue dye in a slammer shirt, but owes remotely i!s evidence to the single-minded mon who coulr not be argued from their search for gold. Tho world crawls crabwiso towards its knowledge.