ON ORICHALCUM. 281 



Vorld, and copper instruments, civil and milita-y, were almost 

 the only ones in use*, a metallic mixture, resembling gold in splen. 

 dour, and preferable to copper, on account of its superior hard- 

 m -s. and being less liable to rust, must have greatly excited the 

 attcnti n of mankind, been eagerly sought alter, and hi hly ex. 

 tolled by them. The Romans, no doubt, when it had been stipu- 

 lated in the league which Porsenna made with them, after the ex. 

 pulsion of the Tarquins, that they should not use iron, except in 

 agriculture, must have esteemed a metallic mixture such as brass, 

 at a rate not easily to be credited t. 1 1 is not here attempted to 

 prove, tnat there never was a metal. ic substance called orichalcum, 

 superior in value and different in quality from brass; but merely 

 to *hew, that the common reason assigned for its existence, is not 

 so cogent as is generally supposed. 



Considering the few ancient writers we have remaining, whose 

 particular business it was to speak with precision concerning sub. 

 jects of art, or of natural history, we ought not to be surprised 

 at the uncertainty in which they have left us concerning orirhal. 

 cum. Men have been ever much the same in all ages ; or, if any 

 general superiority in undrr-tanding is to be allowed, it may seem 

 to be more properly ascribed to those who live in the manhood or 

 old age of the world, than to those who existed in its infancy or 

 childhood : especially as the means of acquiring and communi- 

 cating knowledge, with us, are far more attainable than they were 

 in the times of either Greece or Rome. The compass enables us (o 

 extend our researches to every quarter of the globe with the 

 greatest easej ; and an historcal narration of what is seen in dis. 

 tant countries, is now infinitely more ditiused than it could have 

 been, before the invention of printing; yet, even with these ad- 

 vantages, we are, in a great measure, strangers to the natural his. 



* Hcsiod. 



t In fcedere quod, expulsis regibus, populo Romano dedit Porscnna, no- 

 minaiiin comprehenbum invenimus, ne ferro nisi in agricultura uierenlur. Plin. 

 Ili-t. Nat. Vol. II p. 66C. Was Porsenna indue* d to prohibit thf Romans 

 the use of iron arms, from the opinion, which srems to have prevailed in 

 Greece two hundred years afterward that wounds, made with copper weapon*, 

 were more easily healed, than those made with iron ? Aris. Op. L. I V. p. 43. 



Button quotes Homer's Odyssey, and some Chinese aut iOr*, lo prove that 

 the use of the mariner's compass in navigation was known to inc ai.nrnU, at 

 least three thousand years a?o. Nat. Hist, by Buffon, Vol. IX. p. 17. Smellie'i 

 Trans. 



