282 MAN AND NATURE. 



Lincolnshire, Somersetshire, Northamptonshire, &c., 

 which enlarge the area of future labours. Or we 

 might dwell upon those happy inventions of the hot- 

 blast, the Bessemer process, the artifices for economis- 

 ing heat (four-fifths of which were wasted in the old 

 processes), and the various methods now used for 

 giving higher value and stability to the qualities of this 

 metal for the service of mankind. 



We must touch still more shortly on the other 

 metallic treasures of England the mines of copper, 

 lead, tin, &c. important though they all are to our 

 national welfare. The last of these three, however, 

 merits a few words of- separate notice. Tin is a metal 

 comparatively rare on the globe ; and in Europe is 

 found in working quantity only in Cornwall, Saxony, 

 and Bohemia ; our English county being far the richest 

 in its produce. The annual average of the metal ob- 

 tained here approaches 8,000 tons ; or about 1,200,000/. 

 of marketable value ; a quantity that does not seem 

 likely to be increased. The history of tin has a certain 

 mystery about it, connected as it is with the story of 

 the Phoenician voyages to these remote coasts ; and 

 with the large use of bronze, of which tin is an ingre- 

 dient, not merely in the arts of Greece and Eome, but 

 also in the implements of races of an earlier and ruder 

 time, to whom we can give no name or date, save 

 through these implements of their use. Whence or 

 how did these rude denizens of the Bronze Age, whether 

 in the Cimbric peninsula, in the lacustrine villages of 

 Switzerland, or elsewhere, obtain this metal, so rare 

 and valuable even in our own time ? We know that 



