DISCOVERY 



141 



if the child was to be a dehverer, the only father that 

 we can attribute to it must be Octavian himself. 

 Further, we know that Octavian's wife, Scribonia, was 

 hoping for a child to be bom to her at the end of this 

 ver^' year. \Mio was this child ? It was the Princess 

 Julia, bom in January 39 B.C. We know that the sex 

 of the child was a bitter disappointment to Octav-ian, 

 a disappointment which increased aU through his life 

 when no male heir was ever born to him. Is it un- 

 reasonable to see in this disappointment the reason 

 for the poet's silence ? After all, the poem was pub- 

 lished ; after all, it concerned the work of the child's 

 father more than the child itself ; it concemed the great 

 hopes of the world more than either ; and Vergil might 

 well feel in later life, as indeed everyone felt after the 

 wonderful advent of universal peace nine years later, 

 that the hopes had begun to be fuJfilled. 



[This paper is based on a volume in which the wTiter 

 had some part, entitled Vergil's Messianic Eclogue 

 (John Murray, 1907). Since then the question has been 

 further studied, especially from the point of view of 

 ancient prophecy, by the Rev. T. F. Royds in the 

 volume entitled Vergil and Isaiah (Blackwell, O.xford, 

 1918) ; and in these two volumes full references will be 

 found to earlier authorities.] 



Metal Discoveries of 

 Antiquity and To-day 



By Edward Cahen, A.R.G.Sc, F.I.G. 



Gold, as might have been expected from the fact that 

 it occurs native, was the first of all the metals to be 

 discovered by Neohthic man ; and even to-day this 

 metal still exerts a greater power for good and evU 

 than any other, though there are now plenty of metals 

 which are more rare and more costly. From our 

 early ancestor's point of view gold possessed the great 

 advantage that it required no smelting, there was no 

 need to find out how to get it from its ores ; there the 

 metal was ready for use, ghstening in its pristine 

 splendour, and so soft that it could easily be fashioned 

 into omaments ; too soft, it is true, to be of any service 

 for weapons. He therefore had to look round and 

 see if he could not find something a little harder which 

 would serve for this purpose, and it was not long before 

 he came across another native element, copper, from 

 which he fashioned implements of the same shape 

 and design as his stone ones. From copf)er to bronze 

 is but a Utile step, and one that may possibly have 



been taken by accident, as is suggested by Gowland. 

 Its discovery may have been a matter of chance : a 

 little copper ore, with which some tin is nearly always 

 associated, may have got into the stones which served 

 early man for fireplace. The charcoal would smelt the 

 ore, reducing the metals and making an alloy which 

 would be found among the ashes, and seized upon 

 with joy by primitive man as just the thing from 

 which to make fine weapons on account of its superior 

 hardness. Iron was at first a great rarity, and may 

 possibly have been of meteoric origin, and used for 

 ornamental purposes only. Later the Hittites seem 

 to have found out how to smelt it from its ores, and 

 Wells, in his Outline of History, records how one of 

 their kings " promises iron as a most precious gift," 

 quoting from a collection of letters found at Tel-el- 

 Amarna. In early Egyptian times silver was also 

 known, but it was esteemed nearly as highly as gold. 

 From the above very brief sketch it will be seen 

 how very few metals were known in the very early 

 days of recorded events which we call history ; since 

 then no fewer than sLxty-one metals have been dis- 

 covered, though even now by far the greater number of 

 them remain as unknown to the great mass of the 

 people as if they had never been found. Yet 

 we shall see how many of the amenities of modem 

 life in great cities are due to the discovery first of all 

 of these metals themselves, and secondly of the use 

 to which they could be put. In this article some account 

 wUl be given of what are often known as the rarer 

 metals, to distinguish them from those in everyday 

 use such as gold, silver, copper, and iron ; the name 

 does not, however, necessarily imply that the metal 

 is rare in the sense that but httle of it is known to 

 exist, for many of the raier metals occur in very 

 considerable quantities — titanium for instance, which 

 is so largely employed in the steel industry, and also 

 for colouring practically all the artificial teeth. 



What usuaDy happens is that a new metal is dis- 

 covered at first in very small quantities, some pecuUar 

 properties it may possess mark it out for some 

 particular use, search is made for more of the metal 

 and more is generally found. In this way the supply 

 keeps pace with the demand. At other times large 

 quantities of one of the rarer metals may be associated 

 with very small quantities of another for which a 

 use has been found ; a large and accumulating surplus 

 of the other is thus created, and the problem arises 

 what is to be done with this waste-product, a problem 

 which has to be solved by some new discover^'. 



The gas-mantle industry furnishes us with by far 

 the best example of both these cases, and particularly 

 the latter. It was discovered that the oxide of a rare 

 metal, thorium, which was found in certain rare 

 minerals from Norway, glowed with a very powerful 



