Alloys known to the Ancients. 7? 



ployed in their production. This may be accounted for by 

 the fact, that those who have written on the subject could 

 have been but imperfectly acquainted with it ; from the cir- 

 cumstance of the metals being generally found and extracted 

 in mountainous countries, at a great distance from the large 

 and populous cities in which the authors may be supposed 

 to have usually resided, and who were, therefore, dependent 

 for their facts on those who might be unable to enlighten 

 them very fully on the subject. 



Is it then to be wondered at, that our stock of information 

 should be very limited, or that the ancient authors should 

 treat rather of the uses of the metals, and the formation of 

 alloys, than of their extraction from the ores ? 



The art of working the alloys of copper was cultivated in 

 Rome at a very early period after the foundation of that 

 city, as we read that King Numa, the immediate successor 

 of Romulus, founded a fraternity of brass-founders, from 

 which it may be inferred that the trade was even then in a 

 flourishing condition.* 



At the date in which Pliny wrote his Natural History of 

 the World, the Romans had acquired a very extensive know- 

 ledge of the metals, and their uses ; as we find him, in his 

 thirty-third and thirty-fourth Books, not only describing gold, 

 silver, brass, tin, iron, lead, antimony, mercury, and cadmia; 

 but he gives us also the proportions in which these various 

 metals should be mixed in order to form suitable alloys for 

 casting, soldering, and brazing, and moreover describes with 

 a great degree of accuracy, the medicinal and other proper- 

 ties of some of their oxides and salts, as well as the method 

 of their preparation and the localities in which they were 

 found. But his descriptions of the means used for the ex- 

 traction of these metals from their ores, are not only imper- 

 fect, but also frequently very obscure. This arises both from 

 the abrupt transitions which continually occur, and also from 

 frequent allusions to methods and apparatus long since ob- 

 solete, and on which at the present time we have no means 

 of acquiring any knowledge. 



* Pliny, xxxiv., 4. 



