102 Mr. /. Phillips on Ancient Metallurgy^ Sfc. 



The melting of tin ore is, however, a step in advance of the 

 fusion of native gold. The gold was fused in a crucible (xxxiii, 

 p. 617, Hard.) made of white clay,* which could stand only the 

 heat and the chemical actions which that generated : but tin ore 

 would in this way of operation prove totally infusible. It must 

 be exposed at once to heat and a free carbonaceous element. The 

 easiest way of managing this is to try it on the open hearth. 

 Perhaps some accidental fire in the half-buried bivouacs of the 

 Damnonii may have yielded the precious secret. As to the fuel, 

 we are told that pine-woods were best for brass and iron, (Hard, 

 xxxiii, p. 621;) but the Egyptian papyrus was also used, and 

 straw was the approved fuel for gold. In the metalliferous coun- 

 try of Cornwall and Devon, peat is plentiful ; and an order of 

 King John (1201) allows the miners to dig tin, and turves to melt 

 the tin, any where in the moors, and in the fees of bishops, ab- 

 bots and earls, as they had been used and accustomed. (Con- 

 firmed by Edward I, Richard II. and Henry IV. )f 



These and other singular privileges, extending as far as the 

 land on which the crown claimed rights, are long anterior to the 

 other rights of property in Cornwall, Mendip, Derbyshire and the 

 Forest of Dean, and go far to justify the supposition of our mod- 

 ern mining laws, being a relic of Roman, or perhaps of earlier 

 •than Roman times. 



As the bellows was known at least 1000 years before Pliny, we 

 have here all the materials for a successful tin smelter's hearth. 

 If the smelting work was on waste land, and a little sunk in the 

 ground, we recognize the old ' bole 5 or ' bloomery' of Derbyshire, 

 now only a traditional furnace, but anciently the only one for the 

 lead and iron of that country. 



Pure tin once obtained, there must intervene a long series of 

 trials and errors before its effect in combination with lead, brass, 

 silver, &c, could be known ; before the mode of conquering the 

 tendency to rust in the act of soldering could be discovered ; oil 

 being in this respect as valuable to the tinner as artificial chryso- 

 colla was to the jeweller and goldsmith, (xxxiii, p. 621, Hard.) 

 From all this, it follows that the smelting of tin might be, and 

 probably was, performed by the inhabitants of the Cornish penin- 

 sula. This art they may have brought from the far east ; Phoe- 

 nicians may have taught it them ; but all the accounts of the an- 

 cient tin trade represent the metal, and not the ore, as being car- 

 ried away from the Cassiterides. Diodorus mentions the weight 

 and cubical form of the tin in blocks, carried from Ictis to Mar- 

 seilles and Narbonne ; and Pliny says of the Gallician tin, that it 

 was melted on the spot. 



(To be continued) 



i 



h ms now is called Cornish 

 La Beohe. in Rerx>rt on G< 



