74 Scientific Intelligence. [Jan. 



and a small iron fibula. There was nothing Roman in their character; 

 the form of the sword, in the Rev. Mr. Kerrich's opinion, was not 

 Roman ; the fragments of terra cotta resembled those found with Celtic 

 remains ; and these circumstances, notwithstanding their being disco- 

 vered near the Roman station upon the Gog Magog Hills, tended 

 to show that they were not of Roman origin. The vessels' consisting 

 of an alloy of copper and tin seemed likewise, in Dr. Clarke's opinion, 

 to refer these remains to an earlier period than the time of the Romans 

 in Britain. 



Dr. Clarke found that the bronze of which the vessels were made, 

 was composed of 88 parts of copper, and 12 of tin : he ascertained, 

 also, that the bronze coins of Antoninus Pius and of Marcus Aurelius 

 consisted of the same alloy. 



In his " Account of 'some Antiquities found at Fulbourn in Cambridge- 

 shire," Arch xix. 56 — 61, Dr. C. describes two swords, a spear-head, 

 and two ferrules supposed to have been the feet of spears, which were 

 found on Fulbourn Common early in ] SIT. They were all of bronze, 

 the spear and swords formed on the Grecian model; a bronze sword 

 resembling the latter had been taken out of the river Cam many years 

 before, and swords of the same kind had been found in Ireland. The 

 alloy was hard and brittle ; its fracture, earthy, white, and destitute of 

 metallic lustre, but upon filing showed the splendour and colour of 

 gold; its specific gravity was 9-200; it consisted, like the bronze of 

 the other relics, of 88 copper and 12 tin. 



Dr. Clarke adverts, in the conclusion of this paper, to the "uniform- 

 ity characterising all the results which different chemists have obtained 

 in the analysis of ancient bronze ; a degree of uniformity," he conti- 

 nues, " hardly to be explained without supposing that there may have 

 existed a "native compound of the two metals thus united. In almost 

 every instance the proportion of the copper to the tin has been 88 to 12. 

 This was the result of the analysis made by Mr. Hatchctt, of the bronze 

 nails brought by Sir Win. Gell from the tomb of Agamemnon at 

 Mycence ; the same result was also obtained in the analysis by Dr. 

 Wollaston, of some arrow-heads of bronze found in the South of Russia; 

 and I have found the same constituents similarly combined in various 

 specimens of bronze from Grecian and from Celtic sepulchres ; in the 

 bronze lamps of ancient Egypt, and in the lares, weapons, and other 

 bronzes of the same country. That in the analysis of bronze, found in 

 countries widely separated, there should not be a more perceptible 

 difference in the proportion of their chemical constituents, is a remark- 

 able circumstance. The Gaulish axe found in France, by M. Dupont 

 de Nemours, and which cut wood like a steel axe, might be considered 

 as an exception ; because it contained, according to the analysis of 

 Vauquelin, 87 parts of copper combined with 9 parts of tin ; but in 

 this axe there were also present 3 parts of iron; perhaps an impurity 

 of the tin ; which is rarely free from an admixture of other metals. 

 The tin of the Fulbourn swords, when exposed to a violent heat, 

 yielded an alliaceous smell denoting the presence of arsenic ; and a 

 very small portion of a black insoluble powder remained in the nitric 

 acid after the solution of the copper. 



" To conclude, therefore, if we may be permitted to consider these 

 bronze reliques as so many characteristical vestiges of a peculiar peo- 

 ple, to whom the art was known of giving a maximum of density to 



