BOOK X. 473 



at twelve all is prepared. These hours all reckoned up make a sum of eight 

 hours. 



Now it is time that we should come to the second operation. In the 

 morning the workman takes up two shovelsful of live charcoals and throws 

 them into the crucible through the aperture next to the pipes of the nozzles ; 

 then through the same hole he lays upon them small pieces of fir-wood or of 

 pitch pine, such as are generally used to cook fish. After this the water-gates 

 are opened, in order that the machine may be turned which depresses the levers 

 of the bellows. In the space of one hour the lead alloy is melted ; and when this 

 has been done, he places four sticks of wood, twelve feet long, through the 

 hole in the back of the dome, and as many through the channel ; these 

 sticks, lest they should damage the crucible, are both weighted on the ends 

 and supported by trestles ; these trestles are made of a beam, three feet 

 long, two palms and as many digits wide, two palms thick, and have two 

 spreading legs at each end. Against the trestle, in front of the channel, there 

 is placed an iron plate, lest the litharge, when it is extracted from the furnace, 

 should splash the smelter's shoes and injure his feet and legs. With an iron 

 shovel or a fork he places the remainder of the cakes through the aperture at 

 the back of the dome on to the sticks of wood already mentioned. 



The native silver, or silver glance, or grey silver, or ruby silver, or any 

 other sort, when it has been flattened out^*, and cut up, and heated in an 

 iron crucible, is poured into the molten lead mixed with silver, in order that 

 impurities may be separated. As I have often said, this molten lead mixed 

 with silver is called stannum^^. 



When the long sticks of wood are burned up at the fore end, the 

 master, with a hammer, drives into them pointed iron bars, four feet long and 

 two digits wide at the front end, and beyond that one and a half digits wide 



**See description, p. 269. 



"Stannum, as a term for lead-silver alloys, is a term which Agricola {De Naiura Fossilium, 

 pp. 341-3) adopted from his views of Pliny. In the Interpretatio and the Glossary he gives 

 the German equivalent as werk, which would sufficiently identify his meaning were it 

 not obvious from the context. There can be little doubt that Pliny uses the term for lead 

 alloys, but it had come into general use for tin before Agricola's time. The Roman term was 

 plumbum candidum, and as a result of Agricola's insistence on using it and stannum in what 

 he conceived was their original sense, he managed to give considerable confusion to mineralogic 

 literature for a century or two. The passages from Pliny, upon which he bases his use, are 

 (xxxiv, 47) : " The metal which flows liquid at the first melting in the furnace is called stannum, 

 " the second melting is silver," etc. (xxxiv, 48) : " When copper vessels are coated with 

 " stannum they produce a less disagreeable flavour, and it prevents verdigris. It is also 

 " remarkable that the weight is not increased. ... At the present day a counterfeit 

 " stannum is made by adding one-third of white copper to tin. It is also made in another way, 

 " by mixing together equal parts of tin and lead ; this last is called by some argentahum. 

 .... There is also a composition called fcr/tanww, a mixture of two parts of lead and 

 " one of tin. Its price is twenty denarii per pound, and it is used for soldering pipes. Persons 

 " still more dishonest mix together equal parts of tertiarium and tin, and calling the compound 

 " argentarium, when it is melted coat articles with it." Although this last passage probably 

 indicates that stannum was a tin compound, yet it is not inconsistent with the view that the 

 genuine stannum was silver-lead, and that the counterfeits were made as stated bj' Pliny. 

 At what period the term stannum was adopted for tin is uncertain. As shown by Beckmann 

 (Hist, of Inventions n, p. 225), it is used as early as the 6th century in occasions where tin 

 was undoubtedly meant. We may point out that this term appears continuously in the official 

 documents relating to Cornish tin mining, beginning with the report of William de Wrotham in 

 1198. 



