274 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 
It is quite impossible to enter into any details of Indian metal- 
lurgy; already I have published much on the subject; but, as 
giving some idea of its extent, it may be stated that an account of the 
various forms of bellows by which the blast is produced would alone 
afford material for a very long Paper, while an account of the many 
tribes and races engaged in mining and rough smelting operations 
could not fail to be of the highest interest to the Anthropologist. It 
is a most remarkable fact that, throughout a large part of India, so 
far as I have been able to ascertain, these races and tribes are almost 
always Non-Aryans, or so-called aborigines. It seems, therefore, at 
least possible that these arts originated at a period anterior to the 
Aryan inyasion. 
Gold.—The production of gold in India has, for the moet part, 
been from alluvial washings ; but evidence exists that the crushing of 
auriferous quartz has been practised to some extent in certain locali- 
ties. 
The esteem with which the natives of India regard ornaments of 
absolutely pure gold is notorious; and they have invented two or 
more most ingenious and elaborate processes for removing the alloy 
of silver which occurs naturally in native gold. 
Very full accounts of these processes are given in the famous 
classic of Akbar’s time (the Azn-7-Akbart), which was written in the 
16th century by Abdul Fazl. I cannot here attempt to give even a 
sketch of them; they are fully detailed in the last edition of Percy’s 
Metallurgy. Ass rendered in the two English translations of the Ain, 
by Gladwin and Blochmann, they were found on trial to be imappl- 
cable to the production of the desired result ; and therefore Dr. Percy 
procured an amended translation which, when followed, enabled him 
to refine gold with complete success. 
Silver.—It is generally supposed that India was never a silver- 
producing country, in spite of the fact that there are early notices to 
the effect that it was exported thence to China. From evidence 
which I have collected, I have been led to the conclusion that the 
amount of silver formerly extracted in India from argentiferous galena 
may have been considerable. In many parts, but especially in Madras, 
there are traces of most extensive mining operations having been con- 
ducted for galena, much of it now known to be highly argentiferous ; 
and there still lingers, or did a few years ago, a practice ‘of oxidizing 
the lead into litharge, and so extracting the silver. The process is at 
present certainly practised i in Upper Burmah. 
In some countries large accumulations of litharge, treated as a 
waste product, have been met with, and I think it very probable that, 
in India, such deposits may also exist, though from being covered up 
by jungle they may have escaped observation. If I remember rightly, 
1 Vide ‘ Economic Geology of India.” 
