Brass* 
73 
This colour seems to me to have been first pointed out 
by Dr. Bancroft in page 217 of his experimental research-' 
es on permanent colours, first edition. 
Of the Alloys of Copper . Brass . Orichalchumo The 
orichalchum of the ancients, was of three kinds: the mourn* 
tain copper mentioned by Hesiod. The Corinthian brass* 
a mixture of various metals from the melting together of 
the statues, at the taking of Corinth. Lastly, Brass, made 
by fusing copper with cadmia or calamine. That, latter- 
ly, the orichalchum of the ancients was brass, is sufficient* 
ly made out by the Bishop of Landaff in his treatise on 
orichalchum in the second volume of the Manchester 
Transactions, and in his Essays, vol. 4. His account of 
the modern process for making brass is as follows : 
The method of making ordinary brass I will now de- 
scribe. 
Copper in thin plates, or, which is better, copper re- 
duced (by being poured, when melted, into water J into 
grains of the size of large shot is mixed with calamine and 
charcoal, both in powder, and exposed in a melting pot 
for several hours to a fire not quite strong enough to melt 
the copper, but sufficient for uniting the metallic earth of 
the calamine to the phlogiston of the coal ; this union 
forms a metallic substance, which penetrates the copper 
contiguous to it, changing its colour from red to yellow 3 
and augmenting its weight in a great proportion. The 
greater the surface of a definite weight of copper, the more 
space has the metallic vapour of the calamine to attach 
itself to ; and this is the reason that the copper is granulat- 
ed, and that it is kept from melting and running into a 
mass at the bottom of the vessel, till near the end of the 
operation, when the heat is increased for that purpose. 
The German brass-makers, in the time of Erckern 7 
used to mix 64 pounds of small pieces of copper with 46 
pounds of calamine and charcoal, and from this mixture 
