ABSTRACT
IT IS POSSIBLE to grow a golden slug in a bath of acid. The nineteenth-century alchemist Stephen Emmens describes the method in his book Argentaurana: it begins with a few drops of tannic acid, C11H10O9, in a big bottle of water.1 (In the seventeenth century, alchemists would have gotten tannic acid by sawing the galls off oak trees, drying them, pulverizing them, and mixing the powder with water. Emmens probably got his tannic acid from a chemical supplier.) The diluted liquid tastes faintly astringent, like soured water left standing in a rainbarrel. Into it the alchemist drops a solution of gold chloride.
