MODERN ALCHEMY.
[To THE EllifOlt OF THE " SPEcTATOTc.1 SIR,—There seems to me to be another and a better ground for the widespread belief in the possibility of the conversion of other metals into gold than those named in your interesting article,
There is nothing opposed to scientific axioms in the hypothesis that the metals are not, as we suppose, elementary bodies, but that they are combinations, in varying propor- tions, of a very small number of elementary substances yet to be discovered. If there is any truth in this hypothesis, the conversion of one into another is well within the range of the chemistry of the future. Or, even if absolutely elementary, may not the various metals be allotropic conditions of the same element, and hence convertible one into another P There is scarcely more difference in physical properties between lead and gold than between plumbago and the diamond.—I am,
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