Alloys known to the Ancients. 81 



dark colour and great weight.* " There is likewise found 

 in the gold mines a kind of lead-ore which they call Elutia 

 (stream tin). The water which is let into the mines washes, 

 and carries down with it, certain little black stones, streaked 

 and marked with white, and as heavy as the gold itself. It is 

 gathered with it, and they remain together in the baskets in 

 which the gold is collected. These are not separated from it 

 until after melting in the furnace, when the fusion transforms 

 them into white lead." Again : " You cannot solder toge- 

 ther two pieces of black lead without white lead, neither can 

 this be united to the other without the aid of oil." He also 

 says of this metal : " Neither out of the white lead can any 

 silver be extracted ; whereas out of the black this is com- 

 monly done.'' 



In speaking of common lead, the same author says : '* It 

 is much used for conduit pipes, and for being hammered into 

 thin plates," and then goes on to describe the mines of France, 

 Spain, and Britain, which he states, when quite worked out 

 and exhausted, become as productive as ever, and indeed 

 even more so, if allowed to remain a short time without being 

 worked, for which he accounts, by supposing the metal to be 

 produced by the air, which has then free access into the mine. 

 With regard to the state in which Plumbum Nigrum occurs, 

 we are informed : " Black lead has a double origin ; for it is 

 either produced in a vein of its own without any other metal ; 

 or otherwise it is mingled with silver in the same mine, being 

 mixed together in one stone of ore, and they are only sepa- 

 rated by melting and refining in a furnace. t The first liquor 



* " It is generally considered that the Greeks obtained their tin by means of 

 the Phoenicians from the Scilly Islands or Cornwall, but there is no direct 

 proof of this ; and it appears probable, from the Sanskrit derivation of the 

 Greek word (kassiteros, from kastira), that the Greeks originally obtained 

 their tin from India. The Islands Cassiterides, however, the position of which 

 was unknown to Herodotus (III., 115), are supposed to be the Scilly Islands, 

 or the peninsula of Cornwall, though their position is not exactly defined by 

 Strabo (III., 175). Still there can be little doubt that the Cassiterides, to which 

 the Phoenicians from Gades (Cadiz) went for tin, and the Romans afterwards 

 traded for the same commodity, were on the south-western angle of Great Bri- 

 tain."— Pen. Cyc. Art. ' Hindustan.' 



t Hist. Nat. xxxiv., 16. 

 VOL. LII. NO. cm.— JANUARY 1852. P 



