S90 POROUSNESS AND DURABILITY OP CHARCOAL. 
substances* it has been prettily observed, was giving as it were speech 
to rocks and medals. In the book of Job mention is made of writing 
on stone, on rocks, and on sheets of lead. It was on tables of stone 
that Moses received the law, written by the finger of God himself. 
Hesiod’s works were written on leaden tables ; lead was used for 
writing, and rolled up like a cylinder, as Pliny states. Montfaucon 
notices a very ancient hook of eight leaden leaves, which on the back 
had rings fastened by a small leaden rod, to keep them together. 
They afterwards engraved on bronze : the laws of the Cretans were 
on bronze tables : the Romans etched their public records on brass ; 
the speech of Claudius, engraved on plates of bronze, is yet preserved 
in the town-hall of Lyons, in France. Several bronze tables with 
Etruscan characters have been dug up in Tuscany. The treaties 
between the Romans, Spartans^ and the Jews, were written on brass ; 
and conveyances of estates, for better security, w'ere written on this 
enduring metal. In many cabinets may be found the discharges of 
soldiers, written on copperplates. 
This custom has been discovered in India : a bill of feoffment on 
copper has been dug up near Bengal, dated a century before the 
birth of Christ. 
Among these early inventions, many w'ere singular, rude, and mi- 
serable substitutes for a better material. In the shepherd state, 
they wrote their songs with thorns and awls on straps of leather, 
which they w'ound round their crooks. The Icelanders appear to 
have scratched their nmcs, a kind of hieroglyphics, on walls: and 
Olof, according to one of the Sagas, built a large house, on the balks 
and spars of which he had engraved the history of bis own and more 
ancient times ; whilst another northern hero appears to have had 
nothing better than his own chair and bed on which to perpetuate 
his own heroic acts. At the town-hall in Hanover are kept twelve 
wooden boards, overlaid with bees- wax, on which are written the 
names of owners of houses. These wooden manuscripts must 
have existed before 1423, when Hanover was first divided into streets. 
Such manuscripts may be found in public collections. This exhibits 
a very curious, and the rudest state of society. The same means 
were used among the ancient Arabs, w^ho, according to the history of 
Mahomet, seem to have taken the shoulder bones of sheep, on which 
they carved remarkable events with a knife, and, after tying them 
with a string, hung these chronicles up in their cabinets. 
The laws of the twelve tables, which the Romans chiefly copied 
from the Grecian code, were, after they had been approved by the 
people, engraved on brass ■; they were melted by lightning, which struck 
the capitol, and consumed other laws : a loss highly regretted by 
Augustus. This manner of writing we siill retain, for inscriptions, 
epitaphs, and other memorials designed to reach posterity. 
These early inventions led to the discovery of tables of wood ; and 
as cedar has an antiseptic quality from its bitterness, they chose 
this wood for cases or chests to preserve their most important writings. 
The well-known expressions of the ancients, when they meant to give 
the highest euloglum of an excellent work, et cedro digna locnti, (that 
it w'as worthy to be written on cedar,) alludes to the oil of cedar, with 
