Alloys known to the Ancients. % 85 



period. Aristotle tells us that the Mosynseci, a people who 

 inhabited a country not far from the Euxine Sea, were said 

 to make their copper of a splendid white colour, not by the 

 addition of tin, but by mixing and cementing it with an earth 

 found in that country.* We are also informed by Strabo, 

 that in the neighbourhood of Andera, a city of Phrygia, a 

 remarkable kind of stone was met with, which being calcined 

 became iron, and on being fluxed with a certain kind of 

 earth, yielded drops of a silvery-looking metal, which when 

 mixed with copper, formed an alloy called Aurichalciim,\ 



Sextus Pompeius Festus, who abridged a work of Verrius 

 Flaccus, a grammarian of considerable note in the time of 

 Augustus, mentions cadmia, which he defines as an earth 

 thrown upon copper, in order to convert it into aurichalcum-l 



On this subject Pliny affords us but little information, 

 merely stating where cadmia was found, and naming some 

 of its medicinal properties, but he seems to have regarded it 

 rather as an earth which gave a yellow colour to copper, than 

 as the ore of a distinct metal, zinc being in no instance men- 

 tioned by him, although he speaks of a kind of brass which was 

 manufactured in the island of Cyprus from copper and cadmia. 



If the foregoing quotations were not sufficient to shew that 

 the ancients were acquainted with the art of making zinc 

 brass, the fact has been fully proved by the analyses given in 

 a subsequent part of this paper, by consulting which, zinc 

 will be found to occur some time previous to the Christian 

 era, although at what precise period it would be impossible 

 to determine, without multiplying experiments to an unrea- 

 sonable extent. That metallic zinc, however, was known to 

 the ancients, there is no evidence to prove, since the metal 

 mentioned by Strabo as given out in drops from a certain 

 stone when heated, could scarcely have been zinc, which 

 would, to a great extent, have been volatilized if treated in 

 the way described, and we may therefore suppose, that if the 

 stone referred to by him was an ore of zinc, it might also have 

 contained some other metal, such as lead, with which it is often 

 found associated, and which would produce the appearance 



* Arist. de Mirab. Op. ii., 721. t Strabo, Geo. Ixiii. 



\ " Cadmia terra quae in oes conjicitur ut fiat aurichalcum."— Fes. de Ver. acq. 



