The epitaph following was written by the learned and witty Dr. Charles Smith, author of the histories of Cork and Waterford. It was read at a meeting of the Dublin Medico-Philosophical Society on July 1, 1756, and is a very curious specimen of the “terminology of chemistry:”

“Boyle Godfrey, Chymist and Doctor of Medicine.

EPITAPHIUM CHEMICUM.

Here lieth to digest, macerate, and amalgamate with clay,
In Balneo Arenæ,
Stratum super stratum,
The Residuum, Terra Damnata, and Caput Mortuum,
Of Boyle Godfrey, Chimist,
And M.D.
A man who in this earthly Laboratory
Pursued various processes to obtain
Arcanum Vitæ,
Or the secret to Live;
Also Aurum Vitæ,
Or the art of getting, rather than making, Gold.
Alchemist like,
All his labour and propition,
As Mercury in the fire, evaporated in fumo.
When he dissolved to his first principles,
He departed as poor
As the last drops of an alembic;
For riches are not poured
On the Adepts of this world.
Thus,
Not Solar in his purse,
Neither Lunar in his disposition,
Nor Jovial in his temperament;
Being of Saturnine habit,
Venereal conflicts had left him,
And Martial ones he disliked.
With nothing saline in his composition,
All Salts but two were his Nostrums.
The Attic he did not know,
And that of the Earth he thought not Essential;
But, perhaps, his had lost its savour.
Though fond of news, he carefully avoided
The fermentation, effervescence,
And decupilation of this life.
Full seventy years his exalted essence
Was hermetically sealed in its terrene matrass;
But the radical moisture being exhausted,
The Elixir Vitæ spent,
Inspissated and exsiccated to a cuticle,
He could not suspend longer in his vehicle,
But precipitated gradatim
Per companum
To his original dust.
May that light, brighter than Bolognian Phosphorus,
Preserve him from the Incineration and Concremation
Of the Athanor, Empyreuma, and Reverberatory
Furnace of the other world,
Depurate him, like Tartarus Regeneratus,
From the Fœces and Scoria of this;
Highly rectify and volatilize
His Etherial Spirit,
Bring it over the helm of the Retort of this Globe,
Place in a proper Recipient,
Or Crystalline Orb,
Among the elect of the Flowers of Benjamin,
Never to be saturated
Till the general Resuscitation,
Deflagration, and Calcination of all Things,
When all the reguline parts
Of his comminuted substance
Shall be again concentrated,
Revivified, alcoholized,
And imbibe its pristine Archeses;
Undergo a new transmutation,
Eternal fixation,
And combination of its former Aura;
Be coated over and decorated in robes more fair
Than the majestie of Bismuth,
More sparkling than Cinnabar,
Or Aurum Mosaicum.
And being found Proof Spirit,
Then to be exalted and sublimed together
Into the Concave Dome
Of the highest Aludel in Paradise.”

To Clara Morchella Deliciosa.

(A MYCOLOGICAL SERENADE.)

By Mr. A. Stephen Wilson, North Kinmundy, Aberdeenshire, and
read at a meeting of the Cryptogamic Society at Glasgow in 1880.

“Oh, lovely Clara, hie with me
Where Cryptogams in beauty spore,
Corticiums creep on trunk and tree,
And fairy rings their curves restore;
Mycelia there pervade the ground,
And many a painted pileus rear,
Agarics rend their veils around
The ranal overture to hear.
Where gay Pezizæ flaunt their hues,
A microscopic store we’ll glean,
To sketch with camera the views
In which the ascus may be seen.
Beneath our millemetric gaze
Sporidia’s length will stand revealed,
And eyes like thine will trace the maze
In each hymenium concealed.
Æstivum tubers we shall dig,
Like Suidæ in Fagian shade,
And many a Sphæria-sheltering twig
Will in our vascula be laid.
For hard Sclerotia we shall peer,
In barks and brassicaceous leaves,
And trace their progress through the year,
Like Bobbies on the track of thieves.
While sages deem Solanum sent
To succour Homo’s hungry maw,
We’ll prize it for development
Of swelling Peronospora.
We’ll mount the Myxogastre’s threads
To watch Plasmodium’s vital flow,
While Capillitia lift their heads
Generic mysteries to show.
I’ll bring thee where the Chantarelles
Inspire a mycologic theme,
Where Phallus in the shadow smells,
And scarlet Amanita gleam;
And lead thee where M’Moorlan’s rye
Is waving black with ergot spurs,
And many a Trichobasian dye
Gives worth to corn and prickly burs.
And when the beetle calls us home,
We’ll gather on our lingering way
The violaceous Inolome
And russet Alutacea,
The brown Boletus edulis
Our fishing baskets soon will fill—
We’ll dine on fungi fried in bliss,
Nor dread the peck of butcher’s bill.”

To the Pliocene Skull.

(A GEOLOGICAL ADDRESS.)