ON ORICHALCDM. 279 



there is no impossibility in supposing that copper ore may be so 

 intimately blended with an ore of zinc, or of some other metallic 

 substance, that the compound, when smelted, may yield a mixt me- 

 tal of a paler hue than copper, and resembling the colour of either 

 gold or silver. In Du Halde's History of China, we meet with 

 the following account of the Chinese white copper. " The most 

 extraordinary copper is called pe-tong, or white copper: it is 

 white when dug out of the mine, and still more white within than 

 without. It appears, by a vast number of experiments made at Pe. 

 king, that its colour is owing to no mixture ; on the contrary, all 

 mixtures diminish it's beauty ; for when it is rightly managed, it 

 looks exactly like silver : and were there not a necessity ef mixing 

 a little tutenag, or some such metal with it, to soften it, and pre. 

 vent its brittleness, it would be so much the more extraordinary ; 

 as this sort of copper is, perhaps to be met with no where but in 

 China, and that only in the province of Yunnan*." Notwith- 

 standing what is here said, of the colour of this copper being owing 

 to no mixture, it is certain that the Chinese white copper, as 

 brought to us, is a mixt metal; so that the ore, from which it is 

 extracted, must consist of various metallic substances ; and from 

 some such ore it is possible that the natural orichalcum, if ever it 

 existed, may have been made. But, though the existence of natu. 

 ral orichalcum cannot be shewn to be impossible, yet there is some 

 reason to doubt whether it ever had a real existence or not : for I 

 pay not much attention to what Father Kircher has said of orichal- 

 cum being found between Mexico and the straits of Darien ; be. 

 cause no other author has confirmed his account, at least none oa 

 whose skill in mineralogy we may relyt. 



We know of no country in which it is found at present ; nor was 

 it any where found in the age of Pliny, nor does he seems to hare 

 known the country where it ever had been found. He admits, in- 

 deed, its having been formerly dug out of the earth ; but it is re- 

 markable that, in the very passage he is mentioning by name the 

 countries most celebrated for the production of different kinds of 

 copper, he only says in general, concerning orichalcum, that it had 

 been found in other countries, without specifying any particular 

 country. Plato acknowledges that orichalcum was a thing only 



* Fol. Traus. Vol. I. p, 16. + Kirch. Mund. Sub, 



T4 



