On the Plmiuvian Tin Trade in Cornwall, by R.Edmonds. 19 
ancient walls rudely built of unhewn stones with clay, and near 
them great quantities of ashes, charcoal, and slag, beside some 
ancient broken pottery of very rude manufacture, and much brick. 
In removing a portion of the sand within a few inches of one of 
the walls, my nephew and myself discovered two fragments of a 
bronze vessel resting on charcoal, a considerable portion of which 
had combined with the copper, and a beautiful green substance had 
resulted—the carbonate of copper. The fragments were each about 
six inches long, four wide, and the sixteenth of an inch thick, liaving 
been evidently parts of the circular top of a vessel three feet in 
diameter, the mouth being bent back into a horizontal rim three 
quarters of an inch broad. The thickness of the bronze vessel 
may have been originally much greater than is now indicated by 
the fragments. No charcoal was on the insides of the fragments, 
but their outsides were completely coated with it. One of these 
fragments is now in the Museum of Economic Geology, in London, 
and the other in the Museum of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, 
in Truro. This bronze furnace may have been used for melting the 
previously purified metal, in order to its being cast into iho forms 
mentioned by Diodorus, before it was conveyed to the Mount ; and 
if so, the manner in which tin was anciently melted, is the same 
as at the present day,— so far at least as that the metal was not in 
contact with the fire, but in a furnace heated by external fuel, and 
of the same diameter as the furnace now used, although the 
modern furnace consists of iron, whilst the ancient one was of 
bronze. 
Here 1 must observe that Mr. J. T. Clight, F.S.A., in his ac- 
count of the subterranean chambers at Treveneage, in St. Hilary, 
printed in the Penzance Natural History and Antiquarian Society's 
Report for 1867, p. 25, says, in reference to the description I have 
now and had before given, that " the presence of mortar in the 
masonry with much brick, indicates the Roman character of these 
remains." But I can see no such indication, for the use of brick 
