304 TINNING COPPER, &C. 



wholly safe. The French may be allowed to excel us in cookery, 

 but e probably excel them in cleanliness; fur the melancholy 

 accidents attending the use of copper Tessels, are murh less fre. 

 quent in Filmland thun in France \ and this difference proceeds, I 

 conjecture, from the superior care of the English in keeping their 

 vessels clean, and from the cheapness and purity of the tin w> 

 in tinning copper. VN e are not certain that the-art of tinning 

 copper vessels was known to the Jews, when they came out of 

 Egypt ; the vessels used in the temple service were made of cop. 

 per by divine appointment, and by being constantly kept clean, no 

 inconveniences followed. The wort, from which malt liquor is 

 brewed, is boiled in copper vessels; the distillers and confectioners 

 prepare their spirits and syrups in un-tinncd vessels of the same 

 metal, without our suffering any thing in our health from t 

 practices ; at least, without our being generally persuaded that 

 we suffer any thing. A new copper vessel, or a copper v- 

 newly tinned, is more dangerous than after it has been used : be. 

 cause its pores, which the eye cannot distinguish, get filled up 

 M ifh the substances which are boiled in it, and all the sharp < 

 of the prominent parts become blunted, and are thereby rendered 

 less liable to be abraded. 



M. de la Lande, in describing the cabinet at Portici, observes, 

 that the kitchen utensils, which have been dug up at Herculaneum, 

 are almost all of them made of a compound metal like our bronze, 

 and that many of the vessels are covered with silver, but none of 

 them with tin : and hence he concludes, that the useful art of ap. 

 plying tin upon copper, was unknown to the Romans ; " cet art 

 utile d'appliquer 1'etain sur le cuivre manquoit aux Remains*." 

 By the same mode of arguing, it might be inferred, that whatever 

 is not met with in one house or town, is not to be found in a whole 

 country : yet should a town in England, in which there happened 

 to be plenty of tinned, but no plated or silvered copper, be swal. 

 lowed up by an earthquake, a future antiquary, employed in dig- 

 ging up its ruins, would make a bad conclusion, if he should 

 thence infer, that the English understood, indeed, at that lime, 

 the art of applying a covering of tin, but not one of silver upon 

 copper. If the ingenious author had recollected what is said in the 

 34th book of Pliny's Natural History, he would have seen reason 



* Voyage d' uu Francois en Italic, vol. VII. p. 120. 



