CHAP. X. 



MIDDLE AGES. 293 



tion is confined exclusively to Scotland. Near 

 Glasgow, at Crawford Moor, he learned that 

 gold had been found there in the reigns of 

 Queen Elizabeth and King James the First ; 

 and that Sir John Erskine with four others, had 

 formed a plan for working the mines again. 

 This Sir John Erskine was also a proprietor of 

 mines of silver at Alva, which had ceased to be 

 worked in 1720, having been for six years be- 

 fore carried on under the direction of one Peek, 

 an Englishman. Some silver mines near Lin- 

 lithgow had been worked in the reign of Mary 

 Stuart, but had been long abandoned; and an- 

 other about ten miles from Edinburgh, whose 

 ore in the year 1607 had yielded from each 

 quintal twenty-two ounces of pure silver, had 

 been long abandoned. The professor notices 

 also the gold mine belonging to Lord Hopton, 

 near Moffat, which, he says, had been worked 

 one hundred and fifty years before the time that 

 he was in Scotland. 



We have now no knowledge of the mines of 

 silver in the county of Tipperary in Ireland, 

 which the mines royal company are said to 

 have employed Germans to work. About the 

 year 1796, some stir was made in Ireland by 

 gold having been found in the alluvial soil of the 

 county of Wicklow, where some specimens of a 

 large size were discovered ; but though gold to 

 the value of ten thousand pounds was obtained, 



