Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1880-07-04
THE HISTORY OF METALS.

metals, W.: gOld, silver, copper, tln, Hon,
lead, and mercury or quicksilver. They
were each sacred to some ruling deity. !
Homer has mentioned all these except mer- |
curry. Mercury was common in the century
next before the Christian era. Gold, in
destructible, malleable, the richest in color,
in its lustre, and in its property of not being
altered or even effected by the air, has been
known from the remotest times. 1t is the
Sol or sun of all the chemists, who repre-
sented it by the circle, the emblem of per-
lection. There are drawings of gold wash
ings on Egyptian tombs as early as $500
years before the Christian era, and fine gold
wire was made into ornaments often found
on mummies by the Egyptians $500 years
ago. 1t was coined into the heavy daries OF
Persia, and woven into delicate threads that
enhvened the lowered stuffs of Babylon.
In the earliest days of Greece, gold existed
in great abundance in the Levant. Croesus,
B. C. $50, coined the gold slater, and about
B. @. POI gold coins were first struck off at
Rome, and were denominated aatrei. Cop
per came into use after silver and before
iron. 1t was called Venus by the ancients,
who gave it the symbol of that planet. The
age of copper followed the age of stone.
Homer wrote in the copper age. His ia
nous shield of Achilles is made of gold, sill
yer and copper, small quantity of tin be-
ing put in to harden it. The shield is itself
proof of the art of design and working on
metals having attained a very high degree
of perfection among the Greeks at a period
believed to have been B. G. 962. In mine
near Lake Superior there was found, in 1853,
a mass of copper forty Eight feet long,
twenty feet high, and calculated to contain
one hundred and fifty tons. Brass, which
has often been confounded by ancients with
copper, is merely an alloy made by mixing
one-third zinc with two-thirds of copper.
Brass was made by the ancients without
discovering zinc. Iron, the most important
of metals, came into common use long after
copper was well known. 1t was regarded
by the ancients as symbol of war, and re-
ceived the name of Mars, the god of arms.
Homer mentions mass of iron as one of the
prizes at the funeral games given by Achilles
in honor of Patroius
Then hurled the hero, laundering on the ground,
mass of iron, an enormous round.
Whose weight and size the circling Greeks admire
Rude from the furnace, and butshaped by fire.
t. I
iron into money. At Babylon the huge
stones of the bridges were held together by
bands of iron fixed in places by molten lead
Thucydides tells us that the walls of Pireus
were fastened in the same way. In prepar-
ing the stone for building the Pyramids iron
was used, Herodotus afirms, and iron must
have been employed in engraving the beau
tiful old gems which now are SO valuable
The Ninevites made tools of iron, the an
Gent Britons made spears and lances of it,
and the Romans, during their occupation of
Britain, smelted iron to considerable ex-
text. The iron mines of Elba are said to
have been worked from the time of Alex
ander the Great and Pliny speaks of this
region as inexhaustible in its IRON" The
mines of Arragon and New CASTLE in Spain
are supposed to have been worked from the
times of the latter Jewish kings, successfully
by the Tyrians the Carthaginians and the
Romans. Through all the nations of high
antiquity iron is mentioned almost always in
way that shows it to have been a partially
common but always highly esteemed metal.
Indeed from the difficulty of working it with
the primitive means at the command of men
just emerged from barbarism, it was held at
high price. Only 153 years ago Batachof,
in Russia, bartered iron for an equal weight
of copper coin. Lead, a blueish gray metal,
was known to the Egyptians at an early
date, and is mentioned by Homer; it was
used in Rome in pipes to convey water, and
in thin sheets for roofing purposes. The
powder (cyrussa) used by the Athenian
ladies to tint their compilations, was our
white lead. Lead owes it's usefulness in The
metallic state chiefly to its softness and fusi-
bility. In ancient times it was scarce, and
the chief supply was from India, Spain and
the celebrated mines of Cornwall, England,
which have been worked uninterruptedly
from the earliest historic periods. Tin was
used by the Egyptians nearly 1000 years
ago.-1ruy Times.
HOW TO DEAL WITH RATS.