252 Mr. J. Phillips on Ancient Metallurgy and Mining 



Upon the wliole, the case is probably thus. It is the old 

 PhcBnician trade, destroyed with Carthage, which Strabo de- 

 sci'ibes, and Pub. Crassus went to explore in the /cacro-iTeptSe?. 

 Diodorus Siculus narrates the course of trade in the days of 

 Augustus from Ictis, when Gaul offered an easy route to the 

 Mediterranean; but 100 years of war and commotion inter- 

 rupted this trade of Cornwall with the East, and Pliny was 

 suspicious of the fables of Greece, and knew that tin was 

 obtained in Spain. Notwithstanding this fact, it appears that 

 Cornwall and the Asiatic Isles have been the principal, almost 

 the only sources of the tin of the ancient world, that of Zinn- 

 wald being quite unknown till a much later date. 



Stannum is evidently an alloy of an argentine or tin-like 

 aspect — a variable pewter — a metal more easily melted than 

 copper, for the lining of which it was much used in Pliny's 

 days to obviate the danger of cupreous solutions. This pro- 

 cess we now call tinning; and stannum*, with its variable 

 meanings, is perhaps the common parent of the French dtain, 

 meaning as often pewter as tin ; and of the German zi7in, 

 which like tin in the English workshops, is used sometimes 

 for pewter when lining vessels, and solder when covering sur- 

 faces which are to be joined. Our German silver, Britannia 

 metal, &c. belong to this class. The process of illination with 

 stannum must have been well-executed to justify the exclama- 

 tion of Plinv, that it did not augment the weijjht of the vessel 

 to which It was applied. The Brundisian specula made of it 

 yielded to silver, indeed, at last ; but they are declared to have 

 been of admirable efficiency. 



Stannum, then, is an alloy of tin with lead, tin with brass, 

 tin with antimony, lead with silver, or other variable mixtures 

 of metals often associated in nature. 



Pliny mentions adulterate or alloyed kinds of stannum, 

 composed of one part white brass to three parts of candidum 

 plumbum ; of equal weights of candidum and nigrum (which 

 is called argentarium) ; of two parts of nigrum and one of 

 candidum (called tertiarium) ; with this last lead pipes are 

 soldered f. Fraudulent dealers add to the tertiarium equal 

 parts of album, call it argentarium, and with it plate or line 

 other metals. 



He gives the prices of these compounds and those of pure 



* Pliny's notices of stannum are frequent. See Hardouin, vol. ii. 429, 

 22; 528,7; 530, 30, 31, &c. 



Stanno et aere mixtis, 627, H — illitum seneis vasis saporem gratiorem 

 facit, 669, 14 — discern! vix possit ab argento, 669, 26 — aeramentisjungitur, 

 669,11. 



f Hoc fistulae solidantur. This is the solder of our tinmen. 



