METALLURGY. 267 



is less malleable may admit a finer polish, and may last lot' 

 when exposed, as in breweries, in the navy, &c. to the action of 

 the fire, than the copper which is more malleable. This has been 

 proved by experiment. Three plates of copper, equal to each other 

 in surface and thickness, were exposed, for the same length of 

 time, to a violent tire, with a view of seeing which would best 

 sustain its action ; one plate was made of copper which bad been 

 purified by a chemical process, another was made of copper from 

 Hungary, and the third of Swedish copper. The purified copper, 

 when freed. from the calcinated scales, had lost five grains of its 

 weight, that of Hungary had lost eight, and that of Sweden ele- 

 ven grains*. 



Queen Elizabeth, in 1565, granted by patent all the calamine in 

 England and within the English pale of Ireland to her as?ay mas. 

 ter William Humphrey, and one ( hristopher Schutz, a German, 

 and, as the patent sets forth, a workman of great cunning, 

 knowledge, and experience, as well in the finding of calamine, as 

 in the proper use of it for the composition of the mixt metal called 

 latten or brass +. With these patentees were soon after associ- 

 ated some of the greatest men in the kingdom, as Sir Nicholas 

 Bacon, the Duke of Norfolk, the Earls of Pembroke and Leices- 

 ter, Lord Cobham, Sir William Cecil, and others, and the whole 

 were incorporated into a society, called, The Society for the Mi- 

 neral and Uattery Works, in the year 1568. Mines of latten, 

 whatever may have been at that period meant by the word, are 

 mentioned in the time of Henry VI. who made his chaplain, John 

 Bottwright, comptroller of all his mines of gold and silver, cop. 

 per, latten, lead, within the counties of Devon and Cornwall J; 

 yet I am disposed to think, that the beginning of the brass manu- 

 factory in England may be properly referred to the policy of Eli- 

 sabeth, who invited into the kingdom various persons from Ger- 

 many, who were well skilled in metallurgy and mining. In 1639, 

 a proclamation was issued prohibiting the importation of brass 

 wire; and about the year 1650, one Demetrius, a German, set 



* Mem.de Brux. Vol. IV. 



f Opera Mineralia Explicate, p. 34. This work was written by Moses 

 Stringer, M.I), in 1713, and contains a complete history of tbt* ancient corpo- 

 ration of the city of London, of and for the mines, the mineral and battery 

 works. 



J Id. p. 90. 4 Id. p. 147. 



