46 NOTES ON BRONZE. 



by one Etruscan image of this kind in the British Museum. The 

 iron has expanded and split the bronze. A sort of work cognate 

 with this is represented in the Dorset County Museum. A 

 highly ornamented armlet in the Cunnington Collection, 

 Case xv., has a core of some sort with a sheathing of bronze, 

 apparently not cast, however. Again, several rings and other 

 things in the very remarkable Belbury Find, in the same 

 collection, Case xiv., are of iron, thinly coated with bronze. 



There remains the repouss process to be named as the last 

 touched on in this paper. It must not be passed over because 

 in the Cunnington Collection, Case xv., there is a rude, but very 

 curious and puzzling specimen of this sort of bronze work. We 

 have here to think only of the workmanship. The thin plate has 

 been " repousse* " into a human or divine figure with ornaments 

 round. It gives the idea, however, of not having been wrought 

 by hand-punches in the strictly repousse* manner, but with a 

 stamp and die at one blow as the ornaments of brass trays and 

 such like are done now. 



Bronze wire was used largely by most ancient nations. This, 

 one may suppose, was of bronze without much tin, the rather as 

 the wire ornaments seem very liable to patination. Anyhow the 

 wire was of a pliable, tough nature, as is proved by its close 

 twisting in many specimens. 



Everyone who cares about bronze acquires an extraordinary 

 fondness for the patina of it. This paper, therefore, should not 

 omit Professor Flinders Petrie's remarkable opinion on the 

 subject. He says, * " Patina is not usually formed out of the 

 surface metal, but is of metal drawn by slow action out of the 

 whole mass. A metallic object is not homogeneous, but is made 

 up of a multitude of minute crystals of pure metal and of the 

 various alloys formed by the impurities, or intentional additions, 

 which are present. Thus there are particles all through the 

 mass, which are more oxidizable than their neighbours, and 

 these forming a galvanic action with the less oxidizable are in 



* Archaeological Journal, No. 177, p. 89. 



