Welch. — On some Bronze. Buddhas from Pekin. 209 



a very plain head-covering ; moreover, the image was gilded. 

 But I worked away at this crack, and got a knife in, and at 

 last wrenched open a piece that had been pinched in, and dis- 

 covered sixteen very tightly rolled parchments. I wanted to 

 know all about the writing then, but no one had ever seen such 

 caligraphy before, so at last I sent a photo, to the British 

 Museum, and they translated those I sent, as I have mentioned. 

 I hope some day to say more about tins Tibetan Buddha ; but 

 I think you will agree with me that after that there is no 

 reason to doubt the trooper's statement that he looted them 

 from the Palace. 



I made the remark just now that there were some bronzes 

 containing a large percentage of gold in their composition. 

 This was done to give the finish and colour, or patina, to the 

 article. Gold and silver are known to exist in more or less 

 quantities in all old Chinese bronzes, but the art of mixing is 

 lost. 



I should say here, perhaps, what bronze is. It is essentially 

 a mixture or compound of copper and tin, which metals appear 

 to have been the earliest known. Neither of these metals pos- 

 sesses the hardness required for making instruments, either for 

 domestic or warlike purposes, and they appear to have been 

 early found capable of hardening each other by combination, 

 consisting of different proportions according to the purposes to 

 which it is to be applied. Bronze is always harder and more 

 fusible than copper : it is highly malleable when it contains 

 a very large proportion of copper, while tempering increases 

 its malleability, and it oxidizes very slowly even in moist air : 

 hence its application to so many purposes. 



Mr. Fox, Professor of Egyptology at Oxford, I think, two or 

 three years ago wrote a pamphlet on the ancient Egyptian tools, 

 and he tells how they cut open a stone that had been partly sawn 

 through and found imbedded the corrundrum teeth of a circular 

 saw of bronze. Of course there was only the oxide left, but the 

 teeth were intact, as well as the marks on the stone of the circular 

 saw. The method of case-hardening bronze has been lost for 

 many ages. 



In the bronzes before us strength and hardness were evidentiv 

 uot a desideratum — only beauty of colour, and malleability 

 to run while molten into every crevice of the mould ; but 

 though our chemists can find to a fraction the quantity of the 

 various metals, they cannot find the secret of the mixing. 

 Perhaps it was like the mixing of the Bessemer steel : at a 

 certain temperature manganese is put into the molten iron, 

 which causes the grain or texture to break up into finer particles 

 and lay closer. This is steel by the Bessemer process instead of 



14— Trans. 



