TINNING COPPER, &C. 



it has been frequently, in (his country at least, used alone. In 

 that year, The ""ociety for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufac- 

 tures and Commerce, thought it an object deserving their attention, 

 to offer a premium for the tinning copper and brass vessels with 

 pure tin, without lead or any other alloy. There were several 

 candidates fur the premium; and since that time, the tinning 

 with pure tin. and hammering it upon the copper, has become 

 rery general in England. But this mode of tinning does not appear 

 to have been known, or at least it docs not appear to have been 

 adopted in other countries ; for in the Memoirs of the Royal Aca- 

 demy at Brussels, for the year 1780, M. 1'Abbe Marci recom- 

 mends, as a new practice, the tinning with pure block-tin from 

 England ; though, he says, block tin is a compound body, even 

 as it is imported from England; but he thinks it a much safer co- 

 vering for copper than what is ordinarily used by the braziers ; 

 and he gives -ome directions as to the manner of performing the 

 operation. The Lieutenant General of the Police at Paris, gave it 

 in commission to the College of Pharmacy, in 1781, to make all 

 the experiments which might be necessary for determining whe- 

 ther pure tin might or might not be used for domestic purposes, 

 without danger to health ? The researches which were made, in 

 consequence of this commission, by Messieurs Chai land and Bayen 

 with great ability, were published by order of the French govern, 

 ment ; and they have greatly contributed to lessen the apprehen. 

 sions relative to the use of tin, which had been generally excited by 

 the experiments of Marggraf, published first in the Berlin Memoirs 

 for 1747. That gentleman, in pursuing an experiment of Henckel, 

 who first discovered arsenic in tin, shewed, that, though there was 

 a sort of tin which being fluxed from an ore of a particular kind, 

 contained no arsenic, the East India tin, which is generally esteemed 

 the purest of all others, contained a great deal of arsenic. M. Bosc 

 d' Antic, in his works, which were published at Paris, 1780, sets 

 aside the authority of Marggraf, Cramer, and Hellot, relative to 

 the existence of arsenic in tin ; and is not only of opinion, that the 

 Cornish tin doi'S not conceal any arsenic in its substance, but that 

 its use as kitchen furniture is not dangerous. Messieurs Churland 

 and Bayen found that neither the E.ist India, nor the purest sort 

 of English tin, contained any arsenic ; but that the English tin, 

 usually met with in commerce, did contain arsenic ; though in so 

 small a proportion that it did not amount, in that species of tin 



