Ball — On Zinc and Zinc Ores. 331 



in Java, Borneo, and Siam. The terms pinchbeck and prince V 

 metal appear to be applicable to the same compounds as tomback. 



Tootnague (Hindustani). — Colonel Yule [Glossary) divides the 

 meanings attached to this name under two headings, one being 

 equal to the peh-tung of the Chinese, the composition of which is 

 given on p. 328 ; while the other is a loose application to either zinc 

 or pewter, corresponding, therefore, with the common commercial 

 and very vague term " spelter." According to Beckmann, it was 

 applied to a mixture of tin and bismuth. This was probably when 

 tin from the Straits was first introduced to European commerce by 

 the Portuguese, in the 15th century. Calaem, which was also 

 used, was the more correct title. 



The word is derived from the Persian tntia, an oxide of zinc, 

 a title which is commonly used now in European works on 

 Materia Medica for the artificial oxide. 



Ya-shih (Chinese), which is mentioned, as well as teou-shih, in 

 the Si-yu-ki, a Chinese work compiled in the year a.d. 6^6, is 

 considered by Medhurst to be calamine, used in the formation of 

 brass. Mr. S. Beale, who suggests its identity with the cadmia of 

 Pliny, says that it was possibly called calamine from the name of 

 a port Calamina, at the mouth of the Indus, from which circum- 

 stance the Chinese described it as coming from Po-sse (i. e. Persia). 

 I have not been able as yet to trace the name Calamina on the 

 Indus, but Calliana — a name for a port in Bombay — is mentioned 

 by Sopater (a traveller of the middle of the 6th century) as a place 

 where brass was to be obtained (vide Sir Emerson Tennant's Ceylon,, 

 vol. i. p. 545). 



