They answered, that they could not certainly tell her Majesty, but if it was possible to be done, they thought tin, lead, brass, iron and silver, to be the fittest metals for such an artificial transmutation. Then she asked them, whether art could produce iron, tin, lead, or silver? They answered, not, in their opinion. Then I perceive, replied the Empress, that your judgments are very irregular, since you believe that gold, which is so fixed a metal, that nothing has been found as yet which could occasion a dissolution of its interior figure, may be made by art, and not tin, lead, iron, copper or silver, which yet are so far weaker, and meaner metals than gold is. But the Worm-men excused themselves, that they were ignorant in that art, and that such questions belonged more properly to the Ape-men, which were her Majesty’s chemists.