506 
COPPER. 
standing this method of obtaining copper has been 
long practised in Germany, it is not many years 
since any successful attempts of this kind have been 
made either in England or Ireland. In this last 
country the discovery seems to have been entirely 
owing to accident. A great quantity of water, 
strongly impregnated with sulphate of copper, is- 
sues from the celebrated mine at Arklow, in the 
county of Wicklow, in Ireland. One of the work- 
men having accidentally left an iron shovel in this 
water, found it some weeks after so encrusted with 
a coat of copper, that it was thought to be changed 
into that metal. The proprietors of the mine, in 
pursuance of this hint, made proper pits and re- 
ceptacles for the water, and have obtained, by 
means of soft iron bars put into them, such quan- 
tities of copper, that these streams are now of as 
much consequence as the mines themselves. One 
ton of iron produces near two tons of copper mud ; 
and each ton of mud yields, when melted, sixteen 
hundred weight of copper, which bears a much 
better price than the copper which is fluxed from 
the ore. 
There is in the Isle of Anglesey, on the coast 
of North Wales, a mountain called Paris, which 
abounds in copper ore, the bed of ore being above 
forty feet in thickness. The lessees of this mine 
annually raise from six to seven thousand tons of 
merchantable ore, and daily employ above forty 
furnaces in smelting it. This ore contains a great 
quantity of sulphur, which must be separated by 
