20 Obfervations on Platina, 
and its colour inclines a little more to that of filver than to 
that of iron. fi 
During the time I refided at Corunna in 1770, thie 4 in- 
tendant sede of Galicia, Pietra Buena, who came origi- 
nally from Saint-Malo, made me a prefent of a fmall ingot 
of platina, which was combined with a great deal of zinc 
and red copper. This ingot, which weighed about eight 
ownces, was in Spain confidered as a very rare and curious 
{pecimen. Buffon afterwards gave me two dithes of a mix- 
ture altogether fimilar, which had been manufactured at 
Lima. If platina be thus manufactured in Peru, it needs 
excite no wonder that travellers have not thought it worth 
while to bring to Europe works made by a mixture which 
deprives this metal of the advantages it has in its natural 
ftate over all other metallic fubftances. 
Tt is believed that platina was not known in Europe be- 
fore the appearance of Don Antonio de Ulloa’s Voyage, 
printed in 1748: but it appears that it was known to Julius 
Scaliger ; for he mentions a fimilar metal in one of his works 
printed at Franckfort in 1601. ‘* Know alfo,” fays he, 
“ that in Honduras, a diftri€t between Mexico and Darien, 
there are mines which contain a metal never yet brought to 
a ftate of fufion by fire, or by any of the arts employed by 
the Spaniards*.’’ Scaliger then knew that there had been 
difeovered, between Mexico and the ifthmus of Darien, a. 
metal fo refractory that the Spaniards had never been able to 
melt it. He made ufe of this as an argument againft Jerome 
Cardan, whom he attacked on account of the definition he 
had given of metals. This paffage, which is curious and 
decifive, was pointed out to me by Izquierdo, director of his 
Spanith maje{ty’s cabinet, whois not only an able naturalift, 
but well acquainted with the arts, to which he is a friend 
and a patron. 
* Prasterea fcito, in Funduribus, qui traétus eft inter Mexicam et Darien, 
fodinas effe aurichalci, quod nulloigne, nullis Hifpanicis artibus, haétenus 
Liguefcere poruit. 
Tn 
