SOME FAMOUS SECRETS WHICH ARE LOST TO THE MODERN WORLD.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9555, 30 July 1909, Page 7

SOME FAMOUS SECRETS WHICH ARE LOST TO THE MODERN WORLD.

Despite the progress of which we who live in this modern age are so prone to boast, our forefathers wejre able to do things which we find impossible, or next door to impossible, and secrets which were almost common knowledge hundreds upon hundreds of years ago defy all our to discover. Thousands of years ago, for h - stance, the Egyptians used to embalm the bodies of their dead kings and nobility so perfectly that the bodies are in wonderful preservation to-day, as may be seen in th 3 British Museum. Clever are we are in this age, we eamot do the same. The valuable secret is lost, and modern science canrot recover the lost knowledge. We can, of course, and we do, emblam bodies, [Jbut on'y for temporary preservation, and, comparatively speaking in a most unsatisfactory manner. Bodies which are embalmed nowadays will not be preserved for more than a few years at most; very many of the bodies the Egyptians embalmed before the birth of Christ are still so perfect that the lines of their faces are still as clearly marked as when they were fust embalmed. Sheffield turns out the finest, hardest, and most perfect steel the world produces; but even Sheffield cannot produce ;a sword blade to compare with those of the Saracens made and used hundreds of years ago, and the Saracens never possessed the machinery we have, nor had the advantage of knowing so much about metals as we are supposed to know. A fortune awaits the man who discovers the secret which enabled the Saracens to make sword-blades so keah and hard that they amid cut in two most of the swords used in our army to-day. There are a chzen different methods of making artificial diamonds; tut no»e ot the stones'produced by these methods can compare with those made of old' French paste, the secret of which is lost. So perfect were paste diamonds that it was difficult for even a person with expert knowledge of diamonds lo tell that they were artificially produced whereas most of ■the modern artificial diamonds can easily *be detected, and their durability is nothing like so great as the old padte diamonds; indeed, good paste diamonds are now almost as valuable as real diamonds. *"

Probably 'not: one of every ten thousand buildings standing in all parts of the world and built by modern masons wUP'stiJl be standing five hundred years hence. We 'fro not know how to put stones and bricks together as the aticients did, and, consequentlyf the build ings we raise nowadays are really were 'shells. The buildings of Greece and Italy, which thousands 'of years ago, are in as good condition now as then. ;.The secret is not in the bricks %r the, ''stone,, but In tha cement and mortar, neither of'which essentials can be made as the ancients made them. In modern buildings the cement Mind mortar weakest points; i;i the buildings whi-ch the Romans* a'nd Greeks raised thousands of years ago, the cement and mortar are the strongest points, and hoi good while the very t ;^ tones they bind crumble away will* age. We , cannot, with all our science, make such cement and mortar, and, therefore, we canrot build such buildings as the ancients raised.

Chemis-lry, one might imagine, is the science, which, hie, perhaps, made the greatest strides during the last five or six decade. Yet modern chemists cannct compound such dyes as-.were commonly used when the great nations Qf to-day were unborn. Now and asain it happens that searchers after antiquities come, across fragments of fabrics which were dyed thousands of years ago, and ttiey are astonished by the wonderful richness of the coJours of the cloths, which, flepsite their age, are brighter ard purer than anything we Ci,i'» pruduce. Modern artists buy their colours, ready made, an J spend large sums f money on pigments with which the colour their canvasses. The pic tures of modern artists will be colourless when many of the wjrks of ancient masters are as bright as they are to day. Just as the secret of dying has been lost, so is the secret of preserving the colours of artists' paints. Yet the secret was known to evary ancient artist, for they all mixed their own colours.

How to make durable ink is another great secret we have lost. Look at that letter, five or ten years old, anr' you will probably notice that the writing has faded to a brown colour and is very indistinct. Go to the British museum, and you will find ancient MSS. the writing of which is as black and distinct as if the MSS. were written the day before yesterday. The secret of glass-blowing and tinting is not yet entirely lost; there are si ill a few men who can produce classwork equal to the things of this kiwi whcli the ancents turned out hundreds of years ago. But the average glass manukicturer cannot produce unythng that could at aH compare with some of the commener artclss the Egyptians and, later, the founders of Vencie manufactured; and those.who still hold ths ancient; secret guard it so closely that it will probably due with them and be added to the fong list of things in which our ancestors beat us hollow.