410 BOOK IX. 



charcoal is not abundant, no copper is made from them. From the silver- 

 lead poured into iron moulds they likewise make cakes ; when these cakes 

 have been melted in the cupellation furnace, the silver is parted from the 

 lead, because part of the lead is transformed into litharge and part into 

 hearth-lead, from which in the blast furnace on re-melting they make 



recognise his conterfei from the furnaces as the same substance as the zincum from Silesia. 

 The first correlation of these substances was apparently by Lohneys, in 1617, who says 

 (Vom Bergwerk, p. 83-4) : " When the people in the smelting works are smelting, there is 

 " made under the furnace and in the cracks in the walls among the badly plastered stones, a 

 " metal which is called zinc or counterfeht, and when the wall is scraped it falls into a vessel 

 " placed to receive it. This metal greatly resembles tin, but it is harder and less malleable. 

 " . . . . The Alchemists have a great desire for this zinc or bismuth." That this metal 

 originated from blende or calamine was not recognised until long after, and Libavis 

 (Alchymia, Frankfort, 1606), in describing specimens which came from the East, 

 did not so identify it, this office being performed by Glauber, who says (De Prosperitale 

 Germanias, Amsterdam, 1656) : " Zink is a volatile mineral or half-ripe metal when it is 

 extracted from its ore. It is more brilliant than tin and not so fusible or malleable . . . 

 it turns (copper) into brass, as does lapis calaminaris, for indeed this stone is nothing but 

 infusible zinc, and this zinc might be called a fusible lapis calaminaris, inasmuch as both 

 of them partake of the same nature. ... It sublimates itself up into the cracks of the 

 furnace, whereupon the smelters frequently break it out." The systematic distillation 

 of zinc from calamine was not discovered in Europe until the i8th Century. Henkel is 

 generally accredited with the first statement to that effect. In a contribution published as 

 an Appendix to his other works, of which we have had access only to a French translation 

 (Pyritologie, Paris, 1760, p. 494), he concludes that zinc is a half-metal of which the best ore 

 is calamine, but believes it is always associated with lead, and mentions that an Englishman 

 lately arrived from Bristol had seen it being obtained from calamine in his own country. He 

 further mentions that it can be obtained by heating calamine and lead ore mixed with coal 

 in a thick earthen vessel. The Bristol works were apparently those of John Champion, 

 established about 1740. The art of distillation was probably learned in the East. 



Definite information as to the zinc minerals goes back to but a little before the 

 Christian Era, unless we accept nebular references to aurichalcum by the poets, or what is 

 possibly zinc ore in the " earth " mentioned by Aristotle (De Mirabilibus, 62) : " Men say 

 " that the copper of the Mossynoeci is very brilliant and white, no tin being mixed with it ; 

 " but there is a kind of earth there which is melted with it." This might quite well be an 

 arsenical mineral. But whether we can accept the poets or Aristotle or the remark of 

 Strabo given above, as sufficient evidence or not, there is no difficulty with the- descrip- 

 tion of cadmia and pompholyx and spodos of Dioscorides (ist Century), parts of which 

 we reproduce in note 26, p. 394. His cadmia is described as rising from the copper furnaces 

 and clinging to the iron bars, but he continues : " Cadmia is also prepared by burning the 

 " stone called pyrites, which is found near Mt. Soloi in Cyprus. . . . Some say that 

 " cadmia may also be found in stone quarries, but they are deceived by stones having a 

 " resemblance to cadmia." Pompholyx and spodos are evidently furnace calamine. From 

 reading the quotation given on p. 394, there can be no doubt that these materials, natural or 

 artificial, were used to make brass, for he states (v, 46) : " White pompholyx is made every 

 " time that the artificer in the working and perfecting of the copper sprinkles powdered 

 " cadmia upon it to make it more perfect, the soot arising from this .... is pompholyx." 

 Pliny is confused between the mineral cadmia and furnace calamine, and none of his statements 

 are very direct on the subject of brass making. His most pointed statement is (xxxiv, 2) : 

 " . . . . Next to Livian (copper) this kind best absorbs cadmia, and is almost as good 

 as aurichalcum for making sesterces and double asses." As stated above, there can be little 

 doubt that the aurichalcum of the Christian Era was brass, and further, we do know of brass 

 sesterces of this period. Other Roman writers of this and later periods refer to earth used 

 with copper for making brass. Apart from these evidences, however, there is the evidence of 

 analyses of coins and objects, the earliest of which appears to be a large brass of the Cassia 

 family of 20 B.C., analyzed by Phillips, who found 17.3% zinc (Records of Mining and 

 Metallurgy, London, 1857, P- J 3)- Numerous analyses of coins and other objects dating 

 during the following century corroborate the general use of brass. Professor Gowland 

 (Presidential Address, Inst. of Metals, 1912) rightly considers the Romans were the first to 

 make brass, and at about the above period, for there appears to be no certainty of any earlier 

 production. The first adequate technical description of brass making is in about 1200 A.D., 

 being that of Theophilus, who describes (Hendrie's Trans., p. 307) calcining calamina and 

 mixing it with finely divided copper in glowing crucibles. The process -was repeated by 

 adding more calamine and copper until the pots were full of molten metal. This method 

 is repeatedly described with minor variations by Biringuccio, Agricola (De Nat. Fos.), and 

 others, down to the i8th Century. For discussion of the zinc minerals see note on p. 112. 



