The ancients were always distinguished—especially the Chaldean astrologers and Magians—for their ardent love and pursuit of knowledge in every branch of science... As chemists they were unequalled, and in his famous lecture on The Lost Arts, Wendell Phillips says: The chemistry of the most ancient period had reached a point which we have never even approached. The secret of the malleable glass, which, if supported by one end by its own weight, in twenty hours dwindles down to a fine line that you can curve around your wrist, would be as difficult to rediscover in our civilized countries as to fly to the moon. p. 50