from the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy. 317 



In the earliest ages wire appears to liave been made by cutting thin plates of me- 

 tal into strips* and rounding these upon the anvil ; and Beckmann, in bis His- 

 tory of Inventions,! seems to think that the modern method dates uo earlier 

 than about the middle of the fourteenth century. 



If these ornaments presented no appearance of determined composition, and 

 on the whole contained less silver, it might be supposed that they were made 

 of native gold, merely fused, and worked into the required shapes; but from 

 the results actually obtained, although they are by no means conclusive on this 

 point, I think it appears more likely, on the contrary, that these articles were 

 made from alloys artificially produced, and perhaps from determinate quanti- 

 ties of the constituent metals. If this supposition be correct, no information 

 can be derived from these analyses as to tlie geographical source of the surpris- 

 ing quantity of gold found in the manufactured state in Ireland. In Corn- 

 wall along with the stream tin, in Scotland, and in much larger quantity in 

 Ireland itself, in the county of Wicklow, native gold has been obtained, and this 

 metal (as well as silver, iron, tin, and lead) is mentioned by StraboJ among 

 the products of Britain. It is therefore conceivable that much of the precious 

 metal used in this country may have been found at home, though its quantity 

 would seem to indicate foreign commerce as the more likely channel by which 

 it was procured, unless native gold was anciently much more abundant in Ire- 

 land than it has been in more modern times. 



SILVER ORNAMENTS. 



These are much rarer in Ireland, and throughout the north of Europe, than 

 those of gold, as indeed might be expected in collecting the relics of so distant 

 a period, when we consider that the latter metal occurs, it may be said, invari- 

 ably in the native state, while the former is found so but rarely, and, in Europe 

 at least, not in any very great quantity; and that the silver ores from which 

 it is most abundantly obtained require the application of much metallurgical 

 skill for the extraction of the metal. Apart, too, from the initial difficul- 

 ties attendant upon the smelting of its ores, silver, when obtained, is by no 

 means so malleable or easily worked as gold, a circumstance which in some 



* Exodus, sxsix. 3. Homer, Odyss. lib. viii. 273-278. f ^°1- ^- ^^^- Wiredrawing . 



X Lib. iv. 30. 



2 T 2 



