158 Miscellanies. 



gold, before the reign of Titus, was brought chiefly from Dalmatia ; 

 in aspect it strongly resembles the gold of Gongo-Soco, which con- 

 tains palladium. The coins of Croesus king of Lydia, are of a very 

 pale color, due to some unknown alloy of the gold. In this manner 

 we might obtain important notices of the mineralogical localities of 

 the ancients, and discover the contents of mines, which are now ei- 

 ther lost, or closed, or situated in inaccessible countries. If Wol- 

 laston, Descotils and Tenant, from the platina grains of South Amer- 

 ica, recovered so many new metals, what might not reasonably be 

 expected, from an analysis of all kinds of coins, from the Charon's 

 face of gold, still found in the mouths of the older Egyptian mum- 

 mies, to the modern money of Europe. There are extant coins of 

 gold, silver, copper, lead, zinc, brass, electrum, Corinthian brass, 

 pinchbeck, bell metal, and all kinds of mixed alloys. These have 

 been brought from mines in the heart of Asia, Africa, and the Sea 

 islands, wherever the ambition and power of ancient conquerors led, 

 or their cupidity could extort. Some of those old Hindostanee 

 coins, brought from Calcutta, which are supposed to be of the age 

 of the cave of Eliphanta, are said to be a mixture of gold, silver, 

 copper, and tin, in unknown proportions. The Egypto-Roman 

 coins, some of which were struck at Alexandria, are made chiefly of 

 speculum metal, or a compound of copper, tin and arsenic, analo- 

 gous to the tam-tam of the Chinese, of which gongs are made. Now 

 the workmanship of these coins, which have been struck with a ham- 

 mer, involves the discovery of a fact, which although long ago made 

 in China, is only very recently known in Europe. It is commonly 

 known, that steel which has been heated red hot, and suffered to 

 cool slowly, is soft ; but if exposed to a sudden chill, it becomes ex- 

 ceedingly hard and brittle ; the reverse, however, obtains with this 

 alloy — tam-tam, slowly cooled, is as brittle as glass, but if quenched, 

 it is soft like silver ; in the former state it would be impossible to 

 strike it with a hammer. The method of coining, was to cast the 

 metal into spheroidal masses, these were then put into the die, and 

 impressed by the blow of a hammer. The ancients, themselves, 

 were aware that foreign substances often alloyed their money met- 

 als, but they had no means of finding what they were, or in what 

 proportion. Thus, although the average value of gold, at Rome, 

 was generally twelve times its weight of silver, yet the gold that Cu- 

 vier brought from France, was so much debased, that it never sold 

 for more than nine times its weight of silver. The denarius of Di- 



