BUCK-WHEAT…

BUCK-WHEAT

Grasses alone, and of these the seeds only of those which are so abundant in an eatable farinaceous substance that they deserve to be cultivated as food to man, are properly corn. Notwithstanding this definition, buck-wheat, which belongs to a kind of plants that grow wild in Europe, knot-grass, water-pepper, &c., because it is sown and employed like corn, is commonly reckoned to be corn also. Our wheat and oats, however, were not produced from indigenous grasses, as has been the opinion of some learned naturalists, who, nevertheless, were not botanists; nor has buck-wheat been produced from the above-mentioned wild plants[1287]. Both these assertions can be proved by the strongest botanical evidence; and the latter is supported by historical testimony, which cannot be adduced in regard to the proper species of corn, as they were used before the commencement of our history.

Two centuries ago, when botanists studied the ancients, and believed that they had been acquainted with and given names to all plants, some of them maintained that buck-wheat was their ocimum: others have considered it as the erysimum of Theophrastus; and some as the panicum or sesamum. All these opinions, however, are certainly false. It is indeed difficult to determine what plant the ocimum of the ancients was; but it may be easily proved that it was not buck-wheat, as Bock or Tragus[1288] has confidently asserted. The ocimum, or a species of that name, for it seems to have been applied to several vegetable productions, was a sweet-smelling plant, called also, at least by later writers, basilicum; one kind of ocimum had a thick, woody root[1289], and others possessed a strong medicinal virtue[1290]. The ancient writers on agriculture give it a place between the garden flowers and the odoriferous herbs[1291]; but none of these descriptions can be applied to our buck-wheat, which is both insipid and destitute of smell. Two unintelligible passages of an ancient writer on husbandry make ocimum to have been a plant used for fodder, or rather a kind of green fodder or meslin composed of various plants mixed together[1292]. The erysimum of Theophrastus produced seeds which had a very hot acrid taste[1293]; and he doubts whether it was eaten by cattle[1294]. Pliny says expressly that it ought to be classed rather among medicinal plants than those of the corn-kind[1295]; though Theophrastus has mentioned it more than once among the latter.

It is not worth the trouble to enter into an examination of more opinions of the like kind, as several respectable writers, who lived in the beginning of the sixteenth century, consider buck-wheat to be a plant first introduced into Europe in their time, though they are not all agreed in determining its native country. John Bruyerinus, or as he was properly called, La Bruyère-Champier, physician to Francis I., king of France, who in the year 1530 wrote his book, often printed, De Re Cibaria[1296], says that buck-wheat had been first brought to Europe a little before that time from Greece and Asia. That well-known botanist Ruellius[1297], who wrote in 1536, and Conrade Heresbach[1298], who died in 1576, give the same account. The latter calls the northern part of Asia the original country of this plant, or that from which it had a little before been brought to Germany. A nobleman of Brittany, whose book, Les Contes d’Eutrapel[1299], was printed after his death in 1587, remarks occasionally, that at the time when he wrote, buck-wheat had been introduced into France about sixty years, and that it had become the common food of the poor. Martin Schook[1300] wrote in 1661, that buck-wheat had been known in Flanders scarcely a hundred years. The old botanists, Lobelius, the brothers Bauhin, Matthiolus, and others, all assert that this grain was new in Europe[1301]. I shall here remark, that Crescentio, who lived in the thirteenth century, and described all the then known species of corn, makes no mention of buck-wheat. It undoubtedly acquired this name from the likeness which its seeds have to the fruit of the beech-tree[1302]; and in my opinion another name, that of Heidenkorn (heath-corn), by which it is known in Germany, has been given it because it thrives best in poor sandy soil where there is abundance of heath. From the epithets Turcicum and Saracenicum, its native country cannot be determined, for maize is called Turkish wheat, though it originally came from America. I consider also as improbable the conjecture of the learned Frisch[1303], that from the word Heide (a heathen), an expression little known in Upper Germany, has arisen the appellation of ethnicum[1304], and thence Saracenicum, given to this plant, though the Bohemians call it pohanka, from pohan, which signifies also a heathen.

There is reason to believe that this grain must have been common in many parts of Germany in the fifteenth century. In a bible, printed in Low-German, at Halberstadt, in the year 1522, entitled Biblia Dudesch, the translator, who is not known, but who is supposed to have been a catholic, translates a passage of Isaiah, chap. xxviii. ver. 25, which Luther translates er säet spelz, he soweth spelt, by the words he seyet bockwete, he soweth buck-wheat[1305]. The name heydenkorn occurs in a catalogue of plants so early as the year 1552[1306]; and Jos. Maaler, or Pictorius, has in his Dictionary, printed in octavo, at Zurich in 1561, Heidenkorn, Ocimum. I find there also, Heydel, a plant, Panicum. Dasypodius[1307] likewise in his Dictionary, of which I have the edition printed in 1537, says Panicum, Butzweyss, Heydel; and in a vocabulary of the names of plants added to it, Heydel, Panicum. Butz Weysz, Panicum. Frisch has the word Heydel-Fench, which he explains by Buck-wheat; and he remarks that in the Swiss dialect Buch is changed into Butz. Ryff or Rivius, a physician who lived in the middle of the sixteenth century, has changed Buch or Book into Bauch, and such errors often arise by transforming the High- into Low-German. It has, however, analogy in its favour, for the long o of the Low-German is in High-German often changed into au: for example, look, lauch; schmooken, smauchen; ook, auch; ooge, auge. But the long o of the Low-German becomes frequently the long u of the High-German; as good, gut; buch, buchbaum; book, bookbaum, &c.

That buck-wheat was cultivated in England about the year 1597, is proved by Gerard’s Herbal.

A new species of this grain has been made known of late years, under the name of Siberian buck-wheat, which appears by experience to have considerable advantages over the former. It was sent from Tartary to Petersburgh by the German botanists who travelled through that country in the beginning of the last century; and it has thence been dispersed over all Europe. We are however told in the new Swedish Economical Dictionary, that it was first brought to Finland by a soldier who had been a prisoner in Tartary[1308]. Linnæus received the first seeds, in 1737, from Gerber the botanist[1309], and described the plant in his Hortus Cliffortianus. After this it was mentioned by Ammann[1310], in 1739; but it must have been earlier known in Germany, at least in Swabia; for in 1733 it was growing in the garden of Dr. Ehrhart, at Memmingen[1311]. In Siberia this plant sows itself for four or five years by the grains that drop, but at the end of that time the land becomes so full of tares that it is choked, and must be sown afresh. Even in the œconomical gardens in Germany it is propagated in the same manner; and it deserves to be remarked that it grows wild among the corn near Arheilgen, a few miles from Darmstadt, though it is cultivated nowhere in the neighbourhood. Had it been indigenous there, Ehrhart might in 1733 have raised it from German seed.

The appellation of Saracenicum gives me occasion to add the following remark: Ruellius[1312] says, that in his time a plant had begun to be introduced into the gardens of France, but merely for ornament, called Saracen-millet, the seeds of which were brought to that country about fifteen years before. This millet, which was from five to six feet in height, was undoubtedly a Holcus, and perhaps the same kind as that sought after by us for cultivation a few years ago, under the name of Holcus sorghum[1313]. This Holcus, however, was cultivated, at least in Italy, long before the time of Ruellius; for there is little reason to doubt that it was the Milium indicum which was brought from India to that country in the time of Pliny[1314]. That ancient naturalist says it was a kind of millet seven feet high; that it had black seeds, and was productive almost beyond what could be believed. In the time of Herodotus it was cultivated at Babylon, but it must have been then little known to the Greeks; for that historian would not venture to mention its size and fertility, as he was afraid that his veracity might be called in question[1315]. According to his account, it grew to be as large as a tree. It is worthy of remark, that this kind of millet is still cultivated at Babylon, where it was seen and admired by Rauwolf[1316]. It is undoubtedly the monstrous Holcus mentioned by Apollonius, who considered it as one of the most remarkable productions of India[1317]. It appears that it continued to be cultivated by the Italians in the middle ages; for it was described in the thirteenth century by Crescentio, who speaks of its use and the method of rearing it[1318]. The seeds had some time before been brought from Italy to Germany, and we find that it is on that account called Italian millet. The old botanists named it also Sorgsamen and Sorgsaat; appellations formed from sorghum. The name Morhirse, under which it again came to us from Switzerland, in later times[1319], has arisen either from the black colour of one of the kinds, or it may signify the same as Moren-hirse (Moorish-millet), because it is almost the only corn of the sable Africans[1320]. However this may be, it can never become an object of common cultivation among us, for our summer is neither sufficiently long nor sufficiently warm, to bring it to perfection. Last summer (1787) I could with difficulty obtain a few ripe grains for seed.

[The cultivation of buck-wheat has never been very extensive in this country, as it will not bear the frosts of our springs or the severity of winter. The only counties in which it is grown to a moderate extent are Norfolk and Suffolk, where it is called brank. If a small patch is occasionally met with elsewhere, it is in general principally for the sake of encouraging game, particularly pheasants, which are extremely fond of it.

The seed of the buck-wheat is said to be excellent for horses, the flowers for bees, and the plant green for soiling cows, cattle, sheep, or swine. No grain seems so eagerly eaten by poultry, or makes them lay eggs so soon or so abundantly. The flour is fine and white, but from a deficiency in gluten does not make good fermented bread; it serves well, however, for pastry and cakes, and in Germany and Holland is extensively used, especially by the farmers, dressed in a variety of ways, among others as pancakes, which if eaten hot are light and pleasant, but become very heavy as they cool. A hasty pudding made of the flour with water or milk, and eaten with butter and sugar, is considered a favourite dainty.]

FOOTNOTES

[1287] It cannot however be denied that some indigenous grasses might be brought by culture, perhaps, to produce mealy seeds that could be used as food. It is at any rate certain that some grasses, for example, the slender-spiked cock’s-foot panic-grass, Panicum sanguinale, which we have rooted out from many of our gardens, was once cultivated as corn, and is still sown in some places, but has been abandoned for more beneficial kinds.

[1288] “If the learned would lay aside disputing, and give place to truth, they would be convinced, both by the sight and the taste, that this plant (buck-wheat) is the ocimum of the ancients.”--Kreuterbuch, Augsburg, 1546, fol. p. 248.

[1289] Theophrast. l. vii. c. 3.

[1290] Dioscor. l. ii. c. 171.

[1291] Geopon. l. ix. c. 28.

[1292] Varro, lib. i. cap. 31. That a kind of meslin is here to be understood, has been supposed by Stephanus, in his Prædium Rusticum, p. 493; and Matthiolus is of the same opinion. See Matthioli Opera, p. 408. Buck-wheat may have been employed green as fodder; and it is indeed often sown for that use; but there are many other plants which can be employed for the like purpose.

[1293] Dioscorid. l. ii. c. 188.

[1294] Theophrast. p. 941.

[1295] Plin. lib. xviii. cap. 10. He says in the same place, and also p. 291, that the erysimum was by the Latins called also irio; and hence it is that Ruellius and other old botanists give that name to buck-wheat.

[1296] The first edition was published in octavo, at Lyons, in 1560. Two editions I have now before me; the first is called Dipnosophia seu Sitologia, Francofurti, 1606, 8vo. The other Joan. Bruyerini Cibus Medicus, Norimbergæ, 1659, 8vo. The author was a grandson of Symphorien Champier, whose works are mentioned in Haller’s Biblioth. Botan. i. p. 246.

[1297] De Natura Stirpium, Basiliæ, 1543, fol. p. 324.

[1298] Rei Rusticæ Libri Quatuor. Spiræ Nemetum, 1595, 8vo, p. 120. He calls it triticum faginum, φαγόπυρον, or nigrum triticum, buck-wheat.

[1299] Le Grand d’Aussy quotes from this book in his Histoire de la Vie Privee des François, i. p. 106, the following words: “Sans ce grain, qui nous est venu depuis soixante ans, les pauvres gens auraient beaucoup à suffrir.”

[1300] M. Schookii Liber de Cervisia. Groningæ, 1661, 12mo.

[1301] Lobelii Stirpium Adversaria. Antv. 1576, fol. p. 395.--Bauhini Hist. Plant. ii. p. 993.--Chabræi Stirpium Sciagraphia. Gen. 1666, fol. p. 312, and in App. p. 627.--C. Bauhini Theatr. Bot. p. 530.

[1302] The beech-tree in German is called Buche or Buke, in Danish Bög, and in Swedish, Russian, Polish, and Bohemian, Buk.

[1303] Wörterbuch, p. 434. This derivation may be found also in Martinii Lexicon, art. Fagopyrum.

[1304] Buck-wheat is sometimes named by botanists frumentum ethnicum (heathen-corn), and triticum Saracenicum, because some have supposed that it was introduced into Europe from Africa by the Saracens.

[1305] A particular description of this scarce bible may be found in J. H. a Seelen’s Selecta Litteraria, Lubecæ, 1726, 8vo, p. 398, 409.

[1306] This small work is entitled Vocabula Rei Nummariæ, &c. Additæ sunt Appellationes Quadrupedum, et Frugum, a Paulo Ebero et Casp. Peucero. Witebergæ, 1552, 8vo.

[1307] Dictionarium Latino-Germanicum. Argentorati, 4to.

[1308] Nya Swenska Economiska Dict. Stockh. 1780, 8vo, vol. ii.

[1309] Abhandlungen der Schwedisch. Akad. der Wissenschaften, vi. p. 107, where is given, as far as I know, the first figure of it.

[1310] Stirpes Rariores Imperii Russici, 1739, 4to.

[1311] Ehrhart’s Œkonomische Pflanzen Historie, viii. p. 72.

[1312] Ruellius De Natura Stirp. lib. ii. cap. 27. Some very improperly have considered this plant as Turkish wheat.

[1313] Several species of this genus were cultivated in the southern districts. Their distinguishing characteristics do not however appear as yet to be fully established. Bauhin makes the proper sorghum to be different from the durra of the Arabs. Linnæus in his last writings has separated Holcus bicolor from sorghum. Forskal thus describes the durra: “Holcus panicula ovata; spiculis sessilibus, subvillosis; alternatim appendiculatis; flosculo uno vel duobus vacuis, sessilibus.” There are kinds of it with white and reddish-yellow (fulva) seeds. According to his account, however, the Arabs cultivate another kind known under the name of dochna, though in less quantity, chiefly as food for fowls.

[1314] Lib. xviii. cap. 7. Holcus sorghum is sold at Venice for brooms, as we are told by Ray in his Hist. Plant.

[1315] Herodot. lib. i. cap. 193.

[1316] Beschreibung der Reyss Leonhardi Rauwolfen. Frankf. 1582, 4to, ii. p. 68. The author observes that this kind of millet is mentioned also by Rhases and Serapion.

[1317] Philostrat. Vita Apollon. lib. iii. cap. 2.

[1318] Melica cioe saggina e conosciuta, et e di due manere, una rossa et una bianca, e trovasene una terza manera che a più bianca che l’miglio. Crescentio D’Agricoltura. In Venetia, 1542, 8vo, lib. iii. cap. 17. It appears therefore that in our dictionaries saggina ought not to be explained by Turkish wheat alone.

[1319] Andrea, Briefe aus der Schweitz. Zurich, 1776, 4to, p. 182.

[1320] Adanson, Voyage au Senegal.

SADDLES

In early ages the rider sat on the bare back of his horse without anything under him[1321]; but, in the course of time, some kind of covering, which consisted often of cloth, a mattress, a piece of leather or hide, was placed over the back of the animal. We are informed by Pliny[1322], that one Pelethronius first introduced this practice; but who that person was is not certainly known. Such coverings became afterwards more costly[1323]; they were made frequently in such a manner as to hang down on both sides of the horse, as may be seen by the beautiful engravings in Montfaucon[1324], and were distinguished among the Greeks and Romans by various names[1325]; but even after they were common, it was reckoned more manly to ride without them. Varro boasts of having rode, when a young man, without a covering to his horse; and Xenophon[1326] reproaches the Persians because they placed more clothes on the backs of their horses than on their beds, and gave themselves more trouble to sit easily than to ride skilfully. On this account such coverings were for a long time not used in war; and the old Germans, who considered them as disgraceful, despised the Roman cavalry who employed them[1327]. The information, therefore, of Dion Cassius[1328], according to whom such coverings were first allowed to the Roman cavalry by Nero, is very doubtful. This author, perhaps, alludes only to reviews, at which, it is probable, the cavalry were before obliged always to appear without them. In the time of Alexander Severus, the horses of the whole Roman cavalry had beautiful coverings[1329]. Saddles, however, at that period were certainly unknown, though they afterwards obtained the old name ephippium, which originally signified nothing more than a covering for a horse. Xenophon says, a rider, whether placed on the bare back of the animal or on a covering, must not assume a position as if he sat upon one of those seats which people use in carriages[1330].

Our saddles at present consist of a wooden frame called the saddle-tree, which has on the fore part the pommel; behind it the crupper; and at the sides the stirrups. In the inside they are stuffed like a cushion, and on the outside are covered with leather or cloth. They are made fast to the horse by means of a girth which goes round the animal’s belly; and the breast-leather and crupper prevent them from being moved either forwards or backwards. It is extremely probable that they were invented in the middle of the fourth century: but it is hardly possible to find any certain proof; for we have reason to believe that the ancient covering was gradually transformed into a saddle. Pancirollus[1331] thinks that the first mention of a saddle is to be found in Zonaras; and many have adopted his opinion. This historian relates that Constantine the younger was killed in the year 340 when he fell from his saddle. But in this proof alone I place very little confidence; and Pancirollus seems to have founded his assertion on the Latin translation, in which the word sella is used. Both the Greek and Latin terms[1332], it is true, were employed at later periods to signify a proper saddle; but the Greek word was used long before for the back of the horse, or the place where the rider sat; and the words of Zonaras may be so understood as if Constantine was killed after he had fallen from his horse[1333].

Montfaucon[1334] has given a figure of the pillar of Theodosius the Great, on which he thinks he can distinguish a saddle; and indeed, if the engraving be correct, it must be allowed that the covering of the horse on which the rider sits seems, in the fore part, to resemble the pommel, and behind the extremity of the saddle-tree of our common saddles.

The clearest proof of the antiquity of saddles is the order of the emperor Theodosius in the year 385, by which those who wished to ride post-horses were forbidden to use saddles that weighed more than sixty pounds. If a saddle was heavier, it was to be cut to pieces[1335]. This passage appears certainly to allude to a proper saddle, which at that period, soon after its invention, must have been extremely heavy; and we may conclude from it also, that every traveller had one of his own. As the saddle is here called sella, and as that word occurs oftener at this than at any other period, for the seat of the rider, it is probable that it is to be understood afterwards as signifying a real saddle. Besides, it cannot be denied that where it is used, many other little circumstances are found which may with great propriety be applied to our saddles.

Nazarius, in his panegyric on Constantine the Great, describing the manner in which the enemy’s cavalry were destroyed, says that, when almost lifeless, they hung sedilibus. Lipsius is of opinion that they could have hung in this manner only by saddles; but there is reason to think that they might lay hold of the coverings of the horses, if it be certain that these were girded to the animals like our saddles. Of this, however, there is no proof; for though some have asserted that postilena signified a girth, that meaning has not been supported by sufficient authorities; and it is more probable that the words postilena, antilena, and also postella and antella, as well as the girth itself, which they are supposed to express, were not introduced till after the invention of saddles. The first word occurs in Plautus[1336]; but it perhaps alludes to some part of the harness of draught-horses or cattle. Vegetius[1337] distinguishes saddle-horses from others; and the saddle-tree seems to be mentioned by Sidonius Apollinaris[1338]. In the fifth century saddles were made so extravagantly magnificent, that a prohibition was issued by the emperor Leo I. in which it was ordered that no one should ornament them with pearls or precious stones[1339]. In the sixth century, the emperor Mauritius required that the saddles of the cavalry should have large coverings of fur[1340]. Further information respecting saddles in later times may be seen in Du Cange, who has collected also various terms of art to which the invention of saddles gave rise, such as sellatores, saddlers, of which the French have made selliers; sellare, the saddle-tree; sellare and insellare, to saddle. The ignominious punishment of bearing the saddle, of which a good account may be found in Du Cange[1341], had its origin in the middle ages. The conjecture of Goropius Becanus[1342], that the saddle was invented by the Salii, and named after them, is not worth refutation; as it is perfectly clear that the denomination of sella arose from the likeness of a saddle to a chair; and by way of distinction Sidonius and the emperor Leo say sella equestris; and Jornandes says sella equitatoria. Others, perhaps, will pass no better judgement on a conjecture which I shall here venture to give. I consider it as probable that the invention of saddles belongs to the Persians; because, according to the testimony of Xenophon, they first began to render the seat of the rider more convenient and easy, by placing more covering on the backs of their horses than was usual in other countries. Besides, the horses of Persia were first made choice of in preference for saddle-horses, on account, perhaps, of their being early trained to bear a saddle, though Vegetius[1343] assigns a different reason.

FOOTNOTES

[1321] J. Lipsii Poliorcet. seu de Militia Romana, lib. iii. dial. 7.

[1322] Lib. vii. cap. 56. Hyginns, fab. 274.

[1323] Coverings for horses made of the costly skins of animals are mentioned by Silius Italicus, lib. iv. 270, and lib. v. 148. Also by Statius. See Thebaid. lib. iv. 272. Costly coverings of another kind occur in Virgil, Æneid. lib. vii. 279; viii. 552; and Ovid. Metam. lib. vii. 33. Livy, lib. xxxi. cap. 7, comparing the luxury of the men and the women, says, “Equus tuus speciosius instructus erit, quam uxor vestita.”

[1324] Antiquité Expliquée, tom. ii. lib. 3. tab. 27, 28, 29, 30.

[1325] Seneca, Epist. 80: “Equum empturus, solvi jubes stratum.” Macrob. Saturnal. i. 11: “Stultus est, qui, empturus equum, non ipsum inspicit, sed stratum ejus et frenum.” Apuleius calls these coverings for horses fucata ephippia. They were called also στράματα.

[1326] Pæd. lib. viii.

[1327] Cæsar, De Bello Gallico, lib. iv. 2. An old saddle with stirrups was formerly shown to travellers at Berne in Switzerland, as the saddle of Julius Cæsar. The stirrups, however, were afterwards taken away, and in 1685 they were not to be seen. Mélanges Historiques, recueillis et commentez par Mons.----Amst. 1718, 12mo, p. 81.

[1328] Lib. lxiii. 14. After writing the above, I found with satisfaction that Le Beau, in l’Académie des Inscriptions, vol. xxxix. p. 333, forms the same conjecture. Before that period, the cavalry, when reviewed, were obliged to produce their horses without any covering, that it might be more easily seen whether they were in good condition. This useful regulation was abolished by Nero, in order that the cavalry might exhibit a grander appearance. He employed his soldiers for show, as many princes do at present.

[1329] Lamprid. Vita Alex. Severi, cap. 50.

[1330] De Re Equestri, p. 602. Respecting the stool or chair placed in carriages for people to sit on, see Pitisci Lexic. art. Sella curulis.

[1331] De Rebus Deperditis, lib. ii. tit. 16.

[1332] Ἕδρα and sella.

[1333] Zonaras, lib. xiii. cap. 5. Ἐκπέπτωε τῆς ἕδρας ὁ Κονσταντίνος. Nicetas in And. Comnenus, lib. i. Τῆς ἕδρας ἀποβάλλεται. The word ἕδρα occurs twice in Xenophon, De Re Equestri. He gives an account how the back of the horse should be shaped in order that the rider may have a fast and secure seat; τῷ ἀναβάτῃ ἀσφαλέστεραν τὴν ἕδραν; and where he speaks of currying, says that the hair on a horse’s back ought to be combed down, as the animal will then be less hurt by his rider. I have taken the trouble to consult other historians who give an account of the death of Constantine, but they do not mention this circumstance.

[1334] Antiq. Expliquée, vol. iv. lib. iii. cap. 75, tab. 30.

[1335] Codex Theodosian. lib. viii. tit. 5, leg. 47. Codex Justin. lib. xii. tit. 51, 12.

[1336] Casina. i. 37. See Scheffer, De Re Vehiculari. Frankf. 1671, 4to, p. 125; and Gesneri Thesaur. Ling. Lat.

[1337] De Arte Veterinaria, iv. 6, 2 and 4.

[1338] Lib. iii. epist. 3.

[1339] Codex Justin. lib. xi. tit. 11.

[1340] Mauricii Ars Militaris; edit. Schefferi, lib. i. cap. 2.

[1341] See art. Sellam gestare.

[1342] Lib. ii. Francicorum, p. 48.

[1343] Vegetius, De Arte Veterin. iv. 6, 4to, p. 1157.

STIRRUPS

Respecting the antiquity of stirrups several men of learning[1344] have long ago made researches; but as their observations are scattered through a great variety of books, some of which are now scarce, and are mingled with much falsehood, it will perhaps afford pleasure to many to find here collected and reduced into order the greater, or at least the most important, part of them. In executing this task I shall aim at more than the character of a diligent collector; for to bring together information of this kind, to arrange it, and to make it useful, requires no less readiness of thought than the labours of those who assume the character of original thinkers, and who imagine that they render others inferior to themselves when they bestow on them the appellation of compilers.

We have here a new proof how much people may be deceived, when they suppose that objects must be of great antiquity because they tend to common convenience and because they appear even so indispensably necessary and easy to have been invented, that one can scarcely conceive how they could at any time have been wanting. I cannot, however, deprive our ancestors of the merit of ingenuity and invention; for they must undoubtedly have possessed no small share of talents and ability, to perform, without the assistance of our arts, what perhaps would be difficult even for the present age to accomplish. And who knows but there are many things still to be invented, the discovery of which may give posterity equal reason to reproach us?

Stirrups are useful in two points of view; for they not only assist one in mounting, but also in riding, as they support the legs of the rider, which otherwise would be exposed to much inconvenience. No traces of any invention for this purpose are to be found in the old Greek and Latin writers; and though means to assist people to get on horseback were devised in the course of time, neither stirrups nor any permanent support to the legs were for a long period thought of. Nothing that could perform the same service as a stirrup is to be perceived on ancient coins which exhibit the representation of persons on horseback; on statues cast or formed with the chisel, or on any remains of ancient sculpture. In the excellent equestrian statues of Trajan and Antoninus, the legs of the rider hang down without any support whatever. Had stirrups been in use when these statues were formed, the artists certainly would not have omitted them; and the case would have been the same with those writers who speak so fully of riding, and of the necessary equipage and furniture. How is it possible, that Xenophon, in the two books which he wrote expressly on horsemanship and the art of riding, where he gives rules for mounting, and where he points out means for assisting old people and infirm persons, should not have mentioned stirrups had he been acquainted with them? And how could they have been passed over by Julius Pollux, in his Lexicon, where he gives every expression that concerns riding-furniture?

Hippocrates[1345] and Galen[1346] speak of a disease which in their time was occasioned by long and frequent riding, because the legs hung down without any support. Suetonius[1347] also relates that Germanicus, the father of Caligula, by riding often after dinner endeavoured to strengthen his ankles, which had become weak; and Magius explains this very properly by telling us, that as his legs hung down without stirrups, they would be continually moved backwards and forwards, and of course the circulation of the blood towards those parts would be increased.

Neither in the Greek nor Roman authors do we meet with any term that can be applied to stirrups, for staffa, stapia, staphium, stapha, stapedium, stapeda, and stapes are words formed in modern times. The last, as Vossius and others say, was invented by Franc. Philelphus, who was born in 1398 and died in 1481[1348], to express properly a thing unknown to the ancients, and for which they could have no name. The other words are older, as may be seen in Du Cange, and appear to be derived from the German stapf, which is still retained in Fuss-stapf, a foot-step.

The name of one of the ear-bones, which, on account of its likeness to a stirrup, has from anatomists received the same appellation, may occur here to some of my readers; and if that expression was known to the ancients, it might invalidate my assertion. That small bone, however, was first remarked at Naples in the year 1546 by John Philip Ingrassias, a Sicilian, who called it stapes. To the ancient anatomists it was not known[1349].

Montfaucon is of opinion that it is impossible there could be stirrups before saddles were invented, because the former, at present, are fastened to the latter. This conclusion, however, is not altogether just. Stirrups might have been suspended from leather straps girt round the horse. In mounting, it would only have been necessary that some one should hold fast the strap on the other side; and stirrups arranged in this manner would have supported the feet of the rider as well as ours. It is certain that mounting on horseback was formerly much easier than it has been since the invention of high saddles; and it is probable that stirrups were introduced soon after that period. The arguments which I have here adduced will receive additional force when one considers the inconvenient means which the ancients employed to assist them in getting on horseback; and which, undoubtedly, they would not have used had they been acquainted with stirrups.

The Roman manners required that young men and expert riders should be able to vault on horseback without any assistance. To accustom them to this agility there were wooden horses in the Campus Martius, on which practitioners were obliged to learn to mount and dismount, both on the right and the left side, at first unarmed, and afterwards with arms in their hands[1350]. In many public places, particularly highways, stones were erected, to which a rider could lead his horse in order to mount with more facility. Such stones Gracchus caused to be set up[1351]; and they were to be found at many cities, in the sixteenth century, especially near the council-houses, that they might be used by the members of the council, who at that time did not ride in coaches. A convenience of this kind was constructed at the Roman gate at Frankfort in 1502; and steps for the same purpose may be still seen in many parts of England, where they are employed principally by the ladies. If a certain ludicrous inscription be ancient, such a stone was called suppedaneum; but this word occurs nowhere else[1352].

People of high rank and fortune kept riding-servants to assist them in mounting, who were called stratores[1353]. It was usual also to have portable stools, which were placed close to the horse when one wished to mount; and this gave rise to the barbarous practice of making conquered princes and generals stoop down that the victor might more easily get on horseback by stepping upon their backs as upon a stool. In this ignominious manner was the emperor Valerian treated by Sapor, king of Persia[1354]. Some horses also were so instructed that they kneeled until the rider mounted[1355]; and warriors had on their spears or lances a step or projection, on which they could rest the foot while they got on horseback[1356]. Winkelmann has described a cut stone in the collection of Baron Stosch, on which a rider is represented in the act of mounting with one foot on the step of his spear; and it appears, by an ancient drawing, that a leather loop[1357], into which the foot could be put, was fastened sometimes to the lance also.

Of those who believe that traces of stirrups are to be found among the ancients, no one has erred more than Galeotus Martius[1358], who follows a wrong reading in Lucretius[1359], and translates still worse the words which he adopts. Magius and others consider as authentic an inscription, in which stirrups are clearly mentioned; and because the letters D. M. (diis manibus), usual in Pagan inscriptions, appear at the top, he places it in the first century of the Christian æra[1360]. Menage[1361], however, and others have already remarked that this inscription was forged in modern times, and in all probability by Franc. Columna, who lived in the middle of the sixteenth century, and who sometimes called himself Polyphilus[1362]. Gruter, therefore, reckons it among those which ought to be rejected as spurious: and of as little authority is the silver coin on which the Emperor Constantine is represented on horseback with stirrups.

Magius quotes from the letters of Jerome, who died in the year 420, the following words, “Se cum quasdam accepit litteras jumentum conscensurum, jam pedem habuisse in bistapia.” These words have been again quoted by several writers; and we may readily believe that the author when he wrote them alluded to a stirrup. Magius however quotes from memory, and says, “Si memoria non labat.” But these words are not to be found in Jerome; and it is probable that Magius may have read them in the works of some other author.

The first certain account of stirrups, as far as I have been able to learn, is in a book by Mauritius[1363] respecting the art of war, where the author says that a horseman must have at his saddle two iron scalæ. This work, commonly ascribed to the emperor Mauritius, is supposed to have been written in the end of the sixth century; and it is not a sufficient proof to the contrary, that mention is made in it of the Turks, Franks, and Lombards. The first were then well known; for Justin II. some time before had concluded a peace with them: the Lombards made themselves known in the middle of that century: and the Franks had been known much longer. The same words are inserted by the emperor Leo VI., in his work on tactics, which he wrote in the end of the ninth century[1364]. Still clearer is another passage of Mauritius[1365], and of the emperor Leo[1366], where it is expressly said, that the deputati, who were obliged to carry the wounded horsemen from the field, ought to have two stirrups on the left side of the horse, one at the fore-part and the other at the hind-part of the saddle-tree, that they might each take a disabled soldier on horseback behind them. That these scalæ were real stirrups there seems to be no reason to doubt; and in my opinion, that word, and other expressions of the like kind to be found in later writers, may be understood in this sense, especially as concomitant circumstances appear rather to strengthen than to oppose such a conjecture.

Isidore, in the seventh century, says “Scansuæ, ferrum per quod equus scanditur;” and also “Astraba, tabella, in qua pedes requiescunt[1367]:” both which expressions allude to stirrups. Leo the Grammarian, in the beginning of the tenth century[1368], calls them, as Mauritius does, scalæ. Suidas, who wrote about the same period, says anaboleus signifies not only a riding-servant, who assists one in mounting, but also what by the Romans was called scala. As the machine used for pulling off boots is named a Jack, because it performs the office of a boy, in the like manner that appellation, which at first belonged to the riding-servant, was afterwards given to stirrups, because they answered the same purpose. Suidas, as a proof of the latter meaning, quotes a passage from an anonymous writer, who says that Massias, even when an old man, could vault on horseback without the assistance of a stirrup (anaboleus). Lipsius thinks that the passage is to be found in Appian[1369], respecting Masanissa; and in that case the first meaning of the word may be adopted. Suidas, according to every appearance, would have been in a mistake, had he given Masanissa at so early a period the Roman scalæ, with which he could not be acquainted. But that the passage is from Appian, and that Masanissa ought to be read instead of Massias, is only mere conjecture; at any rate Suidas could commit no mistake in saying that the Romans in his time made use of scalæ. Lipsius, however, was not altogether wrong in considering this quotation alone as an insufficient proof of stirrups, because with the still older and more express testimony of Mauritius he was unacquainted. Eustathius, the commentator of Homer[1370], speaks in a much clearer manner; but he gives us to understand that stirrups in his time, that is in the twelfth century, had not become very common. On a piece of tapestry of the eleventh century, which Montfaucon caused to be engraven[1371], the saddles of all the horses appear to have stirrups. Aimonius calls them scandilia[1372], and in the twelfth century the word staffa occurs very often, and without doubt in that sense[1373]. In the ages of superstition, the clergy carried their boundless pride to such a length, that they caused emperors and kings to hold their stirrups when they mounted on horseback[1374]. It however long continued to be thought a mark of superior dexterity to ride without stirrups, at least Phile praises Cantacuzenus on this account[1375].

FOOTNOTES

[1344] The principal works in which information is to be found on this subject are the following: Hieron. Magii Miscellan. lib. ii. cap. 14.--Gruteri Lampas, ii. p. 1339.--Lipsii Poliorceticon sive de Militia Romana, Antv. 1605, lib. iii. dial. 7.--Pitisci Lexicon Antiquit. Rom. iii. p. 482.--Salmasius in Ælii Spart. Antonin. Carac. p. 163.--G. J. Vossius, De Vitiis Sermonis, Amst. 1695, fol. p. 11.--Polyd. Vergilius De Rerum Inventoribus, lib. iii. cap. 18.--Hugo De Militia Equestri, i. 4.--Licetus De Lucernis.--Menagiana, iv. p. 263.--Brown’s Vulgar Errors.--Berenger’s History and Art of Horsemanship, London, 1771, 4to.--Montfaucon, Antiquité Expliquée, iv. lib. 3, cap. 3, p. 77, and Supplement, iv. lib. ii. cap. 4.--Le Beau, in Mém. de l’Acad. des Inscriptions, xxxix. p. 537.

[1345] De Aëre, Locis et Aquis, sect. 3. The author here speaks in particular of the Scythians, who were always on horseback; but he afterwards extends his observations to all those much addicted to riding.

[1346] Galen. De Parvæ Pilæ Exercitio, cap. 5. De Sanitate Tuenda, lib. ii. cap. 11.

[1347] Vita Caligulæ, cap. 3.

[1348] Fabricii Biblioth. Med. et Inf. Ætatis, vol. v. p. 845.

[1349] The history of this anatomical discovery, written by Ingrassias himself, may be found in J. Douglas, Bibliographiæ Anatomicæ Specimen; Lugd. Bat. 1734, 8vo, p. 186. This discovery was claimed by a person named Columbus; but that it belongs to Ingrassias has been fully proved by Fallopius in his Observat. Anatomicæ.

[1350] Vegetius De Re Milit. i. 18.

[1351] Plutarchus, Vita C. Gracchi.

[1352] This inscription may be found in Thom. Porcacchi Funerali Antichi. Venet. 1574, fol. p. 14.

“Dis pedip. saxum Cinciæ dorsiferæ et cluniferæ, Ut insultare et desultare commodetur, Pub. Crassus mulæ suæ Crassæ bene ferenti Suppedaneum hoc cum risu pos.”

Here Dis pedip. seems to be an imitation of Dis Manibus; saxum of the usual word sacrum: and bene ferenti of bene merenti.

[1353] Lipsius De Milit. Romana, p. 410. Pitisci Lexic. Antiq. These servants were called also ἀναβολεῖς.

[1354] Eutrop. lib. ix. cap. 6.--Victor. epit. 46.--Trebell. Pollio, Vita Valeriani.--Hofmanni Lexic. artic. Calcandi hostium corpora ritus, p. 642.

[1355] Strabo, lib. iii. says that the Spaniards instructed their horses in this manner.

[1356] Lipsius understands in this sense what Livy says, book iv. chap. 19, of Cornelius Cossus, “Quem cum ictum equo dejecisset, confestim et ipse hasta innisus se in pedes excepit.”

[1357] Figures of both may be seen in Berenger, tab. 8.

[1358] De Promiscua Doctrina, cap. 28.

[1359] Lib. v. 1296, “Et prius est repertum in equi conscendere costas.” Martius reads clostris; and thinks that clostra is the Greek name for a ladder, which however is κροσσά.

[1360] In this inscription the following words occur, “Casu desiliens, pes hæsit stapiæ, tractus interii.”

[1361] Menagiana. Paris, 1715, vol. iv. p. 83.

[1362] Fabricii Biblioth. Med. et Inf. Ætatis, i. p. 1131.

[1363] Mauricii Ars Militaris, edita a Joh. Scheffero. Upsaliæ 1664, 8vo p. 22.

[1364] Leonis Tactica, edit. Meursii cap. vi. § 10. p. 57.

[1365] Lib. ii. cap. 8. p. 64.

[1366] Tactica, cap. xii. § 53, p. 150.

[1367] Both passages are quoted by Du Cange from the Gloss. Isidori. The latter word signified also the saddle-bow; for Suidas says, ‘Ἀστράβη, τὸ ἐπὶ τῶν ἐφιππίων ξύλον ὃ κρατοῦσιν οἱ καθεζόμενοι’. Lignum quod est in ephippiis, quod sessores tenent. Allusion is made to this saddle-bow by the emperor Frederic II. De Arte Venandi, ii. 71, p. 152, where he describes how a falconer should mount his horse: “Ponat pedem unum in staffa sellæ, accipiens arcum sellæ anteriorem cum manu sua sinistra, supra quam jam non est falco, posteriorem autem cum dextra, super quam est falco.” Nicetas, however, in Manuel. Comnen. lib. ii. p. 63, gives that name to the whole saddle; for we are told that the Scythians, when about to cross a river, placed their arms on the saddle (ἀστράβην), and laying hold of the tails of their horses, swam after them.

[1368] Leonis Grammatici Chronographia, printed in the Paris Collection of the Byzantine Historians, with Theophanis Chronograph. 1655, fol. p. 470.

[1369] De Bellis Punicis, edit. Tollii, p. 107.

[1370] Odyss. lib. i. 155.

[1371] Monumens de la Monarchie Françoise, i. tab. 35.

[1372] Aimonius De Miraculis Sancti Benedicti, ii. 20.

[1373] Fredericus II. De Venat. lib. ii. cap. 71. According to Du Cange, stirrups as well as spurs occur seldom on seals in the eleventh century. In the thirteenth they are more frequent. See P. W. Gerkens Anmerkungen über die Siegel. Stendal, 1786, 8vo, part 2. Heineccius De Sigillis, p. 205. I shall here remark that Cœlius Rhodiginus, xxi. 31, is mistaken when he says that Avicenna calls stirrups subsellares. Licetus, De Lucernis, p. 786, has proved that this Arabian author speaks only of a covering to secure the feet from frost.

[1374] Instances of this pride have been collected by Du Cange in his annotations on Cinnamus, p. 470, and more may be found in his Dictionary, vol. vi. p. 681. When steps were not erected on the highways, a metal or wooden knob was affixed to each side of the saddle, which the rider, when about to mount, laid hold of, and then caused his servant to assist him. The servants also were often obliged to throw themselves down that their master might step upon their back. See Constantin. De Ceremoniis Aulæ Byzant. p. 242. A, 6; and p. 405, B, 3; also Reiske in his Annotations, p. 135.

[1375] In Cantacuz. edit Wernsdorfii. Lipsiæ, 1768, 8vo, p. 218, who calls stirrups κλίμακες, scalæ.

HORSE-SHOES

It can be proved by incontestable evidence, that the ancient Greeks and Romans endeavoured, by means of some covering, to secure from injury the hoofs of their horses and other animals of burden; but it is equally certain that our usual shoes, which are nailed on, were invented much later[1376]. We are told by Aristotle[1377] and Pliny[1378], that shoes were put upon camels in the time of war, and during long journeys; and the former gives them the same name as that given to the shoes, or rather socks or soles, of the common people, which were made of strong ox-leather. When the hoofs of cattle, particularly oxen, had sustained any hurt, they were furnished with shoes, made of some plant of the hemp kind[1379], wove or plaited together[1380]. These indeed were only a sort of chirurgical bandages; but such shoes were given in particular to mules, which in ancient times were employed more than at present for riding; and it appears by two instances of immoderate extravagance handed down to us by Roman writers, that people of rank caused these shoes to be made very costly. Nero, when he undertook short journeys, was drawn always by mules which had silver shoes[1381]; and those of his wife Poppæa had shoes of gold[1382]. The information of these authors however is not sufficient to enable us to conjecture how these shoes were made; but from a passage of Dio Cassius we have reason to think that the upper part only was formed of those noble metals, or that they were perhaps plaited out of thin slips[1383].

Arrian also reckons these soles or shoes among the riding-furniture of an ass[1384]. Xenophon relates that certain people of Asia were accustomed, when the snow lay deep on the ground, to draw socks over the feet of their horses, as they would otherwise, he adds, have sunk up to the bellies in the snow[1385]. I cannot comprehend how their sinking among the snow could, by such means, have been prevented; and I am inclined rather to believe, that their feet were covered in that manner in order to save them from being wounded. The Russians, in some parts, such as Kamtschatka, employ the same method in regard to the dogs which draw their sledges, or catch seals on the ice. They are furnished with shoes which are bound round their feet, and which are so ingeniously made that their claws project through small holes[1386].

The shoes of the Roman cattle must have been very ill fastened, as they were so readily lost in stiff clay[1387]; and it appears that they were not used during a whole journey, but were put on either in miry places, or at times when pomp or the safety of the cattle required it; for we are informed by Suetonius, that the coachman of Vespasian once stopped on the road to put on the shoes of his mules[1388].

The reason why mention of these shoes on horses occurs so seldom, undoubtedly is, because, at the time when the before-quoted authors wrote, mules and asses were more employed than horses, as has been already remarked by Scheffer and others. Artemidorus speaks of a shod horse, and makes use of the same expression employed in regard to other cattle[1389]. Winkelmann has described a cut stone in the collection of Baron Stosch[1390], on which is represented the figure of a man holding up one foot of a horse, while another, kneeling, is employed in fastening on a shoe. These are all the proofs of horses being shod among the ancients with which I am acquainted. That they were never shod in war, or at any rate, that these socks were not sufficient to defend the hoof from injury, seems evident from the testimony of various authors. When Mithridates was besieging Cyzicus, he was obliged to send his cavalry to Bithynia, because the hoofs of the horses were entirely spoiled and worn out[1391]. In the Latin translation it is added that this was occasioned by the horses not having shoes; but there are no such words in the original, which seems rather to afford a strong proof that in the army of Mithridates there was nothing of the kind. The case seems to have been the same in the army of Alexander; for we are told by Diodorus Siculus, that with uninterrupted marching the hoofs of his horses were totally broken and destroyed[1392]. An instance of the like kind is to be found in Cinnamus, where the cavalry were obliged to be left behind, as they had suffered considerably in the hoofs; an evil, says the historian, to which horses are often liable[1393].

From what has been said I think I may venture to draw this conclusion, that the ancient Greek and Roman cavalry had not always, or in common, a covering for the hoofs of their horses, and that they were not acquainted with shoes like those used at present, which are nailed on. In the remains of ancient sculpture, among the ruins of Persepolis[1394], on Trajan’s pillar, those of Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius, and many others, no representation of them is to be found; and one can never suppose that the artists designedly omitted them, as they have imitated with the utmost minuteness the shoes of the soldiers, and the nails which fasten on the iron that surrounds the wheels of carriages. The objection that the artists have not represented the shoes then in use, and that for the same reason they might have omitted shoes such as ours though common, is of no weight; for the former were used only very seldom; they were not given to every horse, and when they were drawn over the hoof and made fast, they had an awkward appearance, which would not have been the case with iron shoes like those of the moderns. A basso-relievo, it is true, may still be seen in the Mattei palace at Rome, on which is represented a hunting-match of Gallienus, and where one of the horses has a real iron shoe on one of his feet. From this circumstance Fabretti[1395] infers that the use of horse-shoes is of the same antiquity as that piece of sculpture; but Winkelmann has remarked, that this foot is not ancient, and that it has been added by a modern artist[1396].

I will readily allow that proofs drawn from an object not being mentioned in the writings of the ancients are of no great importance, and that they may be even very often false. I am however of opinion, whatever may be said to the contrary, that Polybius, Xenophon in his book on riding and horsemanship, Julius Pollux in his Dictionary where he mentions fully everything that relates to horse-furniture and riding-equipage, and the authors who treat on husbandry and the veterinary art, could not possibly have omitted to take notice of horse-shoes, had they been known at those periods when they wrote. Can we suppose that writers would be silent respecting the shoeing of horses, had it been practised, when they speak so circumstantially of the breeding and rearing of these animals, and prescribe remedies for the diseases and accidents to which they are liable? On account of the danger which arises from horses being badly shod, the treatment of all those disorders to which they are incident has been committed to farriers; and is it in the least probable that this part of their employment should have been entirely forgotten by Vegetius and the rest of the ancients, who studied the nature and maladies of cattle? They indeed speak seldom, and not very expressly, of the ancient shoes put on horses; but this is not to be wondered at, as they had little occasion to mention them, because they gave rise to no particular infirmity. Where they could be of utility, they have recommended them, which plainly shows that the use of them was not then common. Gesner remarks very properly, that Lycinus, in Lucian, who was unacquainted with riding, when enumerating the many dangers to which he might be exposed by mounting on horseback, speaks only of being trod under the feet of the cavalry, without making any mention of the injury to be apprehended from iron shoes. To be sensible, however, of the full force of this argument, one must read the whole passage[1397]. Many of the ancient historians also, when they speak of armies, give an account of all those persons who were most necessary in them, and of the duties which they performed; but farriers are not even mentioned. When it was necessary for the horses to have shoes, each rider put them upon his own; no persons in particular were requisite for that service; but had shoes, such as those of the moderns, been then in use, the assistance of farriers would have been indispensable.

As our horse-shoes were unknown to the ancients, they employed the utmost care to procure horses with strong hoofs[1398], and for the same reason they tried every method possible to harden the hoofs and to render them more durable. Precepts for this purpose may be found in Xenophon[1399], Vegetius[1400], and other authors. It indeed appears wonderful to us, that the use of iron shoes should have remained so long unknown; but it was certainly a bold attempt to nail a piece of iron, for the first time, under the foot of a horse; and I firmly believe that there are many persons at present, who, had they never seen such a thing, would doubt the possibility of it if they heard it mentioned. Horse-shoes, however, are not absolutely necessary; horses in many countries are scarce, and in some they are not shod even at present. This is still the case in Ethiopia, in Japan, and in Tartary[1401]. In Japan, shoes, such as those of the ancients, are used. Iron shoes are less necessary in places where the ground is soft and free from stones; and it appears to me very probable, that the practice of shoeing became more common as the paving of streets was increased. There were paved highways indeed at a very early period, but they were a long time scarce, and were to be found only in opulent countries. But when roads covered with gravel were almost everywhere constructed, the hoofs of the horses would have soon been destroyed without iron shoes, and the preservatives before employed would have been of very little service.

However strong I consider these proofs, which show that the ancients did not give their horses shoes such as ours, I think it my duty to mention and examine those grounds from which men of learning and ingenuity have affirmed the contrary. Vossius lays great stress, in particular, upon a passage of Xenophon, who, as he thinks, recommends the preservation of the hoofs by means of iron. Gesner, however, has explained the words used by that author so clearly as to leave no doubt that Vossius judged too rashly. Xenophon[1402] only gives directions to harden the hoofs of a horse, and to make them stronger and more durable; which is to be done, he says, by causing him to walk and to stamp with his feet in a place covered with stones. He describes the stones proper for this purpose; and that they may be retained in their position, he advises that they should be bound down with cramps of iron. The word which Vossius refers to the hoofs, alludes without doubt to the stones which were to be kept together by the above means. Xenophon, in another work, repeats the same advice[1403], and says that experience will soon show how much the hoofs will be strengthened by this operation.

Vossius considers also as an argument in his favour the expressions used by Homer and other poets when they speak of iron-footed and brazen-footed horses, loud-sounding hoofs, &c., and is of opinion that such epithets could be applied only to horses that had iron shoes. But if we recollect that hard and strong hoofs were among the properties of a good horse, we shall find that these expressions are perfectly intelligible without calling in the assistance of modern horse-shoes. Xenophon employs the like comparisons free from poetical ornament, and explains them in a manner sufficiently clear. The hoofs, says he, must be so hard, that when the horse strikes the ground, they may resound like a cymbal. Eustathius, the scholiast of Aristophanes, and Hesychius, have also explained these expressions as alluding to the hardness and solidity of the hoofs. Of the same kind is the equus sonipes of the Roman poet[1404]; and the stags and oxen with metal feet[1405], mentioned in fabulous history, which undoubtedly were not shod. Epithets of the like nature were applied by the poets to persons who had a strong voice[1406].

Le Beau quotes a passage of Tryphiodorus, which on the first view seems to allude to a real horse-shoe. This author, where he speaks of the construction of the Trojan horse, says that the artist did not forget the metal or iron on the hoofs[1407]. But supposing it true that the author here meant real shoes, this would be no proof of their being known at the time of the Trojan war, and we could only be authorised to allow them the same antiquity as the period when the poet wrote. That however is not known. According to the most probable conjectures, it was between the reign of Severus and that of Anastasius, or between the beginning of the third and the sixth century. Besides, the whole account may be understood as alluding to the ancient shoes. At any rate, it ought to be explained in this manner till it be proved by undisputed authorities that shoes, such as those of the moderns, were used in the time of the above poet.

Vossius asserts that he had in his possession a Greek manuscript on the veterinary art, in which there were some figures, where the nails under the feet of the horses could be plainly distinguished. But we are ignorant whether the manuscript or the figures still exist, nor is the antiquity of either of them known. It is probable that shoes were given to the horses by a modern transcriber, in the same manner as another put a pen into the hand of Aristotle.

In my opinion we must expect to meet with the first certain information respecting horse-shoes in much later writers than those in which it has been hitherto sought for, and supposed to have been discovered. Were it properly ascertained that the piece of iron found in the grave of Childeric was really a part of a horse-shoe, I should consider it as affording the first information on this subject, and should place the use of modern horse-shoes in the eighth century. But I do not think that the certainty of its being so is established in a manner so complete as has hitherto been believed. Those who affirm that this piece of iron had exactly the shape of a modern horse-shoe, judged only from an engraving, and did not perceive that the figure was enlarged[1408]. The piece of iron itself, which seemed to have four holes on each side, was so consumed with rust, that it broke while an attempt was made to clear them; and undoubtedly it could not be so perfect as the engraving.

The account given by Pancirollus induced me to hope that I should find in Nicetas undoubted evidence of horse-shoes being used about the beginning of the thirteenth century; but that writer has deceived both himself and his readers, by confining himself to the translation. After the death of Henry Baldwin, the Latins threw down a beautiful equestrian statue of brass, which some believed to be that of Joshua. When the feet of the horse were carried away, an image was found under one of them which represented a Bulgarian, and not a Latin as had been before supposed. Such is the account of Nicetas; but Pancirollus misrepresents it entirely; for he says that the image was found under a piece of iron torn off from one of the feet of the horse, and which he considers therefore as a horse-shoe. The image, however, appears to have represented a vanquished enemy, and to have been placed in an abject posture under the feet of the statue (a piece of flattery which artists still employ), and to have been so situated that it could not be distinctly seen till the whole statue was broken to pieces. Hence perhaps arose the vengeance of the Latins against the statue, because that small figure was by some supposed to represent one of their nation[1409].

As it appeared to me that the words used by ancient authors to express shoes[1410] occurred less frequently in the writers of later periods, I conjectured that modern horse-shoes, in order that they should be distinguished from the ancient shoes, might have received a particular new name, under which I had never found them mentioned. In the course of my researches, therefore, I thought of the Greek word selinaia, the meaning of which I had before attempted to explain; and I am now fully convinced that it signifies horse-shoes, such as those used at present, as has been already remarked by others. As far as I know, that word occurs, for the first time, in the ninth century, in the works of the Emperor Leo[1411]: and this antiquity of horse-shoes is in some measure confirmed by their being mentioned in the writings of Italian, English, and French authors of the same century. When Boniface marquis of Tuscany, one of the richest princes of his time, went to meet Beatrix, his bride, mother of the well-known Matilda, about the year 1038, his whole train was so magnificently decorated, that his horses were not shod with iron but with silver. The nails even were of the same metal; and when any of them dropped out they belonged to those who found them. The marquis appears to have imitated Nero; but this anecdote may be only a fiction. It is related by a contemporary writer; but, unfortunately, his account is in verse; and the author, perhaps sensible of his inability to make his subject sufficiently interesting by poetical ornaments, availed himself of the license claimed by poets to relate something singular and uncommon[1412]. However this may be, it is certain that the shoes of the horses must have been fastened on with nails, otherwise the author could not have mentioned them.

Daniel, the historian, seems to give us to understand that in the ninth century horses were not shod always, but only in the time of frost, and on other particular occasions[1413]. The practice of shoeing appears to have been introduced into England by William the Conqueror. We are informed that this sovereign gave the city of Northampton as a fief to a certain person, in consideration of his paying a stated sum yearly for the shoeing of horses[1414]; and it is believed that Henry de Ferres or de Ferrers, who came over with William, and whose descendants still bear in their arms six horse-shoes, received that surname because he was entrusted with the inspection of the farriers[1415]. I shall here observe, that horse-shoes have been found, with other riding-furniture, in the graves of some of the old Germans and Vandals in the northern countries; but the antiquity of them cannot be ascertained[1416].

FOOTNOTES

[1376] The principal works with which I am acquainted that contain information respecting the antiquity of horse-shoes, are the following: Pancirollus De Rebus Deperditis, ii. tit. 16, p. 274.--J. Vossius in Catulli Opera. Ultrajecti, 1691, 4to, p. 48.--Lexicon Militare, auctore Carolo de Aquino. Romæ, 1724, fol. ii. p. 307.--Gesner in his Index to Auctores Rei Rusticæ, art. Soleæ ferreæ.--Montfaucon, Antiquité Expliquée, iv. liv. 3. p. 79.--Le Beau, in Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions. vol. xxxix. p. 538.--Archæologia, London, 1775, 4to, iii. p. 35 and 39.

[1377] Histor. Anim. ii. 6, p. 165, edit. Scaligeri. They appear not to have been used at all times, but only when the hoofs began to be injured.

[1378] Hist. Nat. lib. xi. cap. 43.

[1379] A few observations respecting spartum maybe of service to those who wish to carry their researches further. The ancients, and particularly the Greeks, understood by that appellation several species of plants which could be used and manufactured like flax or hemp, and which appear to have been often mentioned under that general name. The Greeks however understood commonly by spartum a shrub, the slender branches of which were woven into baskets of various kinds, and which produced young shoots that could be prepared and manufactured in the same manner as hemp; and this plant, as has already been remarked by the old botanists, is the Spartium junceum, or Spanish broom, which grows wild on dry land, that produces nothing else, in the Levant and in the southern parts of Europe. This broom is that described and recommended in Comment. Instituti Bonnoniensis, vi. p. 118, and vi. p. 349. The French translator of the papers here alluded to is much mistaken when he thinks, in Journal Economique, 1785, Novembre, that the author speaks of the common broom (Spartium scoparium) that grows on our heaths. M. Broussonet, in Mémoires d’Agriculture, par la Société de Paris, 1785, p. 127, has also recommended the cultivation of the Spart. junceum, under the name of genêt d’Espagne, and enumerated the many uses to which it may be applied. The people in Lower Languedoc, especially in the neighbourhood of Lodeve, make of it table-cloths, shirts and other articles of dress. The offal or rind serves as firing. This spartum of the Greeks, or Spartium junceum of the botanists, is the species called by Pliny, book xxxix. chap. 9, genista, and which he improperly considers as the Spanish and African spartum. The latter is certainly the Stipa (Macrochloa) tenacissima, which grows in Spain and Africa, called there at present sparto or esparto, and which is still prepared and employed as described by Pliny, b. xix. c. 2. Baskets, mattresses, ship-cables, and other strong ropes were made of it; and when this grass had been prepared like hemp, it was used for various fine works. Even at present the Spaniards make of it a kind of shoes called alpergates, with which they carry on a great trade to the Indies, where they are very useful on the hot, rocky and sandy soil. [Moritz Willkomm, in his Botanical Notices from Spain (Annals of Natural History for March 1845), notices among the most valuable vegetable productions of Spain, “the celebrated Esparto (Macrochloa tenacissima), which, growing on many of the hills situated near the sea, forms an important article of trade in South Spain, since this tough grass is used partly for the plaiting of coverings for rooms and balconies, and for making various sorts of baskets, especially panniers for mules, chairs, and the peculiar sandals which are worn all over the kingdom; and partly worked into ropes, which are in great request, and are manufactured in great quantity at Marseilles.”] Whether the ancients made shoes for their cattle of the Spartium junceum or the Stipa tenacissima, I will not venture to determine. It is probable that the former was used by the Greeks, and the latter by the Romans; and it is highly worthy of being here remarked, that in modern times a kind of socks for horses were made of a species of spartum, as we learn from J. Leonis Africæ Descriptio, lib. iii. p. 120. The same author however says expressly, p. 96, that common shoes of iron were also used.

[1380] Columella, vi. 12, 3: “Spartea munitur pes.” vi. 15, 1: “Spartea calceata ungula curatur.” Vegetius, i. 26, 3: “Spartea calceare curabis.” See also ii. 45, 3. Galen De Alim. Facult. i. 9: Σπαρτὸς ἐξ οὗ πλέκουσι ὑποδήματα ὑποζυγίοις. Is there not some reason therefore to conclude that this practice was followed not merely in regard to cattle only that were diseased?

[1381] Sueton. Vita Neronis, cap. 30.

[1382] Plin. lib. xxxiii. cap. 11.--Scheffer, De Re Vehiculari, proves that we are here to understand she-mules.

[1383] Dio Cassius, lxii. 28, and lxxiii. Commodus caused the hoofs of a horse to be gilt.

[1384] Commentar. in Epictetum, lib. iii.

[1385] Xenophon De Cyri Min. Expedit. p. 228.

[1386] B. F. Hermann, Beytrage zur Physik. Œkonomie der Russischen Länder. Berlin, 1786, 8vo, part i. p. 250. The same account respecting the dogs of Kamtschatka is given in Cook’s last Voyage.

[1387] Catullus, viii. 23. By which passage it appears that the shoe was of iron, iron wire, or plate-iron.

[1388] Sueton. Vita. Vespasian seems to have suspected that his driver had been bribed to stop by the way, and that he had done so on pretence of shoeing his horses. Had the mules been shod, and had the driver only had to rectify something that related to the shoe, as our coachmen have when a nail is lost, or any other little accident has happened, Suetonius would not have said mulas, but mulam. The driver therefore stopped for the first time on the journey to put on the shoes of his cattle, as has been remarked by Gesner.

[1389] Artemidori Oneirocritica. Lutetiæ, 1603, 4to, lib. iv. cap. 32.

[1390] Déscription des Pierres Gravées du Baron de Stosch, 1760, p. 169.

[1391] Appian. De Bello Mithridat. edit. Tollii, p. 371.

[1392] Diodor. Sicul. lib. xvii. 94, edit. Wesselingii, p. 233. Vegetius, i. 56, 28, mentions a salve, “quo ungulæ nutriantur, et medicaminis beneficio subcrescat quod itineris attriverat injuria.”

[1393] Joh. Cinnamus De Rebus Gestis Imperat. edit. Tollii, 1652, 4to, lib. iv. p. 194. Vegetius, ii. 58, recommends rest for horses after a long journey, on account of their hoofs.

[1394] No traces of them are to be found in the figures given by Chardin, and by Niebuhr in the second volume of his Travels. The latter mentions this circumstance in particular, and says, p. 157, “It appears that the ancient Persians had no stirrups and no proper saddle.”

[1395] De Columna Trajani, c. 7.

[1396] Pierres Gravées de Stosch, p. 169.

[1397] Navigium seu Vota. “Nunquam equum ullum ascendi ante hunc diem. Proinde metuo, tubicine classicum intonante, decidens ego in tumultu a tot ungulis conculcer, aut etiam equus ferocior existens, arrepto freno in medios hostes efferat me, aut denique oporteat me alligari ephippio, si manere super illud debeam, frenumque tenere.”--Had stirrups been then in use, he would have been exposed also to the danger of being dragged along by the heels. When I extracted the above passage, I had no edition of Lucian at hand, but that of Basle, 1563, 12mo. It may be found there, vol. ii. p. 840.

[1398] The prophet Isaiah, chap. v. ver. 28, to make the enemy appear more terrible, says, “The hoofs of their horses shall be counted like flint;” and Jeremiah, chap. xlvii. v. 3, speaks of the noise made by the horses stamping with their hoofs. See Bochart. Hierozoic. i. p. 160.

[1399] De Re Equestri, cap. iv. p. m. 599.

[1400] Lib. i. cap. 56, 28, 30; also lib. ii. cap. 57, 58.

[1401] J. Ludolphi Hist. Æthiop. i. cap. 10, and his Commentarium, p. 146.--Thevenot, vol. ii. p. 113.--Voyage de Le Blanc, part ii. p. 75, 81.--Lettres Edifiantes, vol. iv. p. 143.--Tavernier, vol. i. c. 5.--Hist. Gen. des Voyages, vol. iii. p. 182.--Kæmpfer, Histoire du Japan, Amst. 1732, 3 vols. 12mo, ii. p. 297. The passage of the last author, where he mentions the articles necessary for a journey in Japan, is worthy of notice: “Shoes for the servants and for the horses. Those of the latter are made of straw, and are fastened with ropes of the same to the feet of the horses, instead of iron shoes, such as ours in Europe, which are not used in this country. As the roads are slippery and full of stones, these shoes are soon worn out, so that it is often necessary to change them. For this purpose those who have the care of the horses always carry with them a sufficient quantity, which they affix to the portmanteaus. They may however be found in all the villages, and poor children who beg on the road even offer them for sale, so that it may be said there are more farriers in this country than in any other; though, to speak properly, there are none at all.”

Almost the same account is given by Dr. Thunberg, a later traveller in Japan. “Small shoes or socks of straw,” says he, “are used for horses instead of iron shoes. They are fastened round the ankle with straw ropes, hinder stones from injuring the feet, and prevent the animal from stumbling. These shoes are not strong; but they cost little, and can be found every where throughout the country.” Shoes of the same kind, the author informs us, are worn by the inhabitants.--TRANS.

[1402] De Re Equestri, p. 599.

[1403] Hipparch, p. m. 611.

[1404] Virg. Æneid. lib. iv. 135. lib. xi. 600, 638.

[1405] Virg. Æneid. lib. vi. 803. Ovid. Heroid. ep. xii. 93, and Metamorph. lib. vii. 105. Apollonius, lib. iii. 228.

[1406] Iliad. lib. v. 785. Stentor is there called χαλκεόφωνος. Iliad. lib. xviii. 222, Achilles is said to have had a brazen voice. Virg. Georg. lib. ii. 44: ferrea vox.

[1407] Tryphiod. by Merrick, Ox. 1739, v. 86, p. 14.

[1408] The first figure may be found in Anastasis Childerici, Francorum regis, sive Thesaurus sepulchralis Tornaci Nerviorum effossus; auctore J. J. Chifletio. Antverpiæ, 1655, 4to, p. 224. Montfaucon, in Monarchie Françoise, i. p. 16, has given also an engraving of it. Childeric died in the year 481. In 1653 his grave was discovered at Tournay, and a gold ring with the royal image and name found in it afforded the strongest proof that it was really the burying-place of that monarch. In the year 1665, these antiquities were removed to the king’s library at Paris.

[1409] The whole account may be found at the end of the Annals, in the Paris edition by Fabrotti, 1647, fol. p. 414.

[1410] The words ὑποδήματα and soleæ.

[1411] Leonis Tactica, v. 4. p. 51.--In the passage where he names every thing belonging to the equipage of a horseman, he says, πέδικλα σελιναῖα σιδηρὰ μετὰ καρφίων αὐτῶν. I shall here first remark, that after πέδικλα there ought to be a comma, for by that word is meant the ropes with which saddled horses were fastened. Du Cange says πεδικλοῦν signifies to bind. See likewise Scheffer’s Annotations on Mauricii Ars Militaris, p. 395. The translator also has improperly said, “Pedicla, id est calceos lunatos ferreos cum ipsis carphiis.” Κάρφια means nails, as Du Cange has proved by several instances, and here horse-shoe nails. The word may be found for the second time in the tenth century, in the Tactica of the Emperor Constantine, where the whole passage, however, is taken from Leo without the least variation; so that we may suppose Constantine understood it in the same sense as Leo. It is used, for the third time, by the same emperor, twice in his book on the Ceremonial of his own court. In p. 265, where he speaks of the horses (τὰ ἱππάρια) which were to be procured for the imperial stable; these, he says, were to be provided with every thing necessary, and to have also σελιναῖα. In page 267 it is said further, that a certain number of pounds of iron should be given out from the imperial stores to make σελιναῖα, and other horse-furniture. The same word is used a fourth time by Eustathius, who wrote in the twelfth century, in his commentary on Homer, Χαλκὸν δὲ νῦν λέγει τὰ σελιναῖα ὑπὸ τοῖς ποσὶ τῶν ἵππων, οἷς διακόπτονται εἰς πλέον τὰ πατούμενα. See Iliad. lib. xi. 152. Though I do not believe that Homer had the least idea of horse-shoes, I am fully convinced that Eustathius alludes to them by that word. This commentator has explained very properly various passages of the like kind in Homer; but he seems here, as was the case sometimes with his poet himself, to have been asleep or slumbering.

When one considers that the σελιναῖα, or σεληναῖα, belonged to horse-furniture; that they were made of iron; that, as Eustathius says, they were placed under the hoofs of the horses; that the word seems to show its derivation from the moon-like form of shoes, such as those used at present; and lastly, that nails were necessary to these σελιναῖα; I think we may venture to conclude, without any fear of erring, that this word was employed to signify horse-shoes of the same kind as ours, and that they were known, if not earlier, at least in the ninth century.

[1412] This life of Matilda may be found in Leibnitii Scriptores Brunsvicenses, vol. i. p. 629; but the fullest and most correct edition is in Muratori Rerum Italicarum Scriptores. Mediolani 1724, fol. vol. v. p. 353.

[1413] Histoire de France, vol. i. p. 566. The author here speaks of the cavalry of Louis le Débonnaire.

[1414] Dugd. Bar. i. 58. ex Chron. Bromtoni, p. 974, 975, Blount’s Tenures, p. 50.

[1415] Brook’s Discovery of Errors in the Catalogue of the Nobility, p. 198.

[1416] Beckmann in Beschreibung der Mark Brandenburg, Berlin, 1751, 2 vols. fol. i. p. 401, mentions an old shoe found in a grave, the holdfasts of which did not project downwards but upwards. Arnkul in his Heidnischen Alterthümern speaks also of a horse-shoe found near Kiel.

FLOATING OF WOOD

The conveying of wood in floats is an excellent invention; as countries destitute of that necessary article can be supplied by water carriage, not only with timber for building and other useful purposes, but also with fire-wood. The former is either pushed into the water in single trunks, and suffered to be carried along by the stream, or a number of planks are ranged close to each other in regular order, bound together in that manner, and steered down the current as boats are, by people accustomed to such employment. The first method is that most commonly used for fire-wood. Above floats of the second kind a load of spars, deals, laths, pipe-staves, and other timber, is generally placed; and with these, floaters will trust themselves on broad and rapid rivers, whereas fire-wood is fit to be transported only on rivulets or small streams; and sometimes canals are constructed on purpose[1417]. However simple the invention of floating fire-wood may be, I consider the other method as the oldest; and I confess that I do not remember to have found in ancient authors any information respecting the former. Fire-wood was, indeed, not so scarce formerly in the neighbourhood of large cities as it is at present. Men established themselves where it was abundant; and they used it freely, without thinking on the wants of posterity, till its being exhausted rendered it necessary for them to import it from distant places. It is probable that the most ancient mode of constructing vessels for the purpose of navigation gave rise to the first idea of conveying timber for building in the like manner; as the earliest ships or boats were nothing else than rafts, or a collection of beams and planks bound together, over which were placed deals. By the Greeks they were called schediai, and by the Latins rates; and it is known from the testimony of many writers, that the ancients ventured out to sea with them on piratical expeditions as well as to carry on commerce; and that after the invention of ships they were still retained for the transportation of soldiers and of heavy burthens[1418].

The above conjecture is confirmed by the oldest information to be found in history respecting the conveyance by water of timber for building. Solomon entered into a contract with Hiram, king of Tyre, by which the latter was to cause cedars for the use of the temple to be cut down on the western side of Mount Lebanon above Tripoli, and to be floated to Jaffa. The words at least employed by the Hebrew historian, which occur nowhere else, are understood as alluding to the conveyance of timber in floats; and this explanation is considered by Michaelis as probable. At present no streams run from Lebanon to Jerusalem; and the Jordan, the only river in Palestine that could bear floats, is at a great distance from the cedar forest. The wood, therefore, must have been brought along the coast by sea to Jaffa[1419]. In this manner is the account understood by Josephus; but although he assures us that he gives the letters of both the kings as they were at that time preserved in the Jewish and Tyrian annals, it is certain that they are spurious, and that he took the whole relation from the sacred books of the Jews which are still extant, as he himself tells us in the beginning of his work[1420].

An old tradition prevailed that the city Camarina, on the southern coast of Sicily, was built of the clay or mud which the river Hipparis carried along with it, and deposited in a lake of the same name. This account seems to be confirmed by a passage in Pindar, which Aristarchus quotes in explaining it[1421]; and, according to Bochart, some proof is afforded also by the name Camarina, as chamar or chomar signifies sealing-clay[1422]. In this tradition there is nothing improbable. In the like manner the Egyptians drew up mud from the lake Mœris[1423]; and thus do the Dutch at present fish up in bag-nets the fine mud or slime which chokes up their rivers, such as the Issel, and which they employ for various uses. This explanation, however, has not been adopted by the old commentators of Pindar. Didymus[1424] and others assert that the poet alludes to wood for building the city being conveyed in floats on the river Hipparis. But whatever opinion may be formed of these elucidations of the scholiasts, we have reason to conclude that the inhabitants of Camarina were much better acquainted with the floating of wood than with drawing up slime by means of bag-nets.

The Romans transported by water both timber for building and fire-wood. When they became acquainted, during their wars against the Germans, with the benefit of the common larch, they caused large quantities of it to be carried on the Po to Ravenna from the Alps, particularly the Rhætian, and to be conveyed also to Rome for their most important buildings. Vitruvius says[1425] that this timber was so heavy, that, when alone, the water could not support it, and that it was necessary to carry it on ships or on rafts. Could it have been brought to Rome conveniently, says he, it might have been used with great advantage in building. It appears, however, that this was sometimes done; for we are told that Tiberius caused the Naumachiarian bridge, constructed by Augustus, and afterwards burnt, to be rebuilt of larch planks procured from Rhætia. Among these was a trunk one hundred and twenty feet in length, which excited the admiration of all Rome[1426].

That the Romans procured fire-wood from Africa, particularly for the use of the public baths, is proved by the privileges granted on that account to the masters of ships or rafts by the emperor Valentinian[1427]. Those who have read the writings of the Latin authors with attention must have remarked other testimonies; but I have found no mention in the ancients of floating timber in single planks, or of canals dug for that purpose; at least as far as I can remember. In the Latin language also there are scarcely two words that allude to what concerns the floating of timber; whereas the German contains more of that kind, perhaps, than are to be found in any other; and I am thence induced to conjecture that the Germans were the first who formed establishments for this mode of conveyance on a large scale.

The earliest information respecting the floating of wood in Saxony appears to be as old as the year 1258[1428], when the margrave Henry the Illustrious remitted by charter to the monastery of Porta, the duty collected at Camburg from the wood transported on the river Saale for the use of the monastery[1429]. It is, however, uncertain whether wood really conveyed in floats, or transported in boats and lighters, be here meant. Much clearer information concerning wood floated on the Saale is contained in a letter, expedited in the year 1410 by the two brothers Frederic and William, landgraves of Thuringia, and margraves of Misnia, in which, on account of the scarcity of wood that prevailed in their territories, they so much lessened the toll usually paid on the Saale as far as Weissenfels, that a Rhenish florin only was demanded for floats brought on that river to Jena, and two Rhenish stivers for those carried to Weissenfels; but the proprietors of the floats were bound to be answerable for any injury occasioned to the bridge[1430]. In the year 1431, Hans Munzer, an opulent citizen of Freyberg, with the assistance of the then burgomasters, put a float of wood upon the river Mulda, which runs past the city, in order that it might be conveyed thither for the use of the inhabitants and of the mines; which seems to be a proof that the floating of timber was at that period undertaken by private persons, on their own risk and at their own expenses. In 1486 the floating of wood on the Mulda by the people of Zwikaw, was opposed by the neighbouring nobility; but the rights of the city were protected by the electors. When the town of Aschersleben built its church in the year 1495, the timber used for the work was transported on the Elbe from Dresden to Acken, and thence on the Achse to the place of its destination. This is the oldest account known of floating timber on the Elbe. In the year 1521, duke George caused a large canal to be cut at the village of Plauen, which was supplied with water from the Weiseritz, and carried as far as Dresden. It appears that in 1564 there was a float-master, who was obliged to give security to the amount of four hundred florins; so that the business of floating must at that time have been of considerable importance. Floating of wood was undertaken at Annaberg in 1564, by George Oeder, one of the members of the council, and established at the expense of 4000 florins. Of the antiquity of floating in other German states I know nothing more than what is to be gathered from public ordinances respecting this object and forests; by which we learn that in the sixteenth century it was practised in Brandenburg, on the Elbe, Spree, and Havel; in Bavaria, and in the duchy of Brunswick[1431].

As the city of Paris had consumed all the wood in its neighbourhood, and as the price of that article became enormous on account of the distance of forests and the expense of transporting it, John Rouvel, a citizen and merchant, in the year 1549, fell upon the plan of conducting wood bound together along rivers which were not navigable for large vessels. With this view, he made choice of the forests in the woody district of Morvant, which belonged to the government of Nivernois; and as several small streams and rivulets had their sources there, he endeavoured to convey into them as much water as possible[1432]. That great undertaking, at first laughed at, was completed by his successor René Arnoul, in 1566. The wood was thrown into the water in single trunks, and suffered to be driven in that manner by the current to Crevant, a small town on the river Yonne; where each timber-merchant drew out his own, which he had previously marked, and, after it was dry, formed it into floats that were transported from the Yonne to the Seine, and thence to the capital. By this method large quantities of timber are conveyed thither at present from Nivernois and Burgundy, and some also from Franche-Comté. The French extol highly a beneficial establishment formed by one Sauterau, in Morvant, at his own expense, by which the transportation of timber was rendered much more speedy, and for which a small sum was allowed him from the proprietors of all the wood floated on the Yonne.

The success of this attempt soon gave rise to others. John Tournouer and Nicholas Gobelin, two timber-merchants, undertook to convey floats in the like manner on the Marne; and canals were afterwards constructed in several places for the purpose of forming a communication between different rivers. The French writers consider the transportation of large floats, trains de bois, like those formed at present, from the before-mentioned districts, and also from Bourbonnois, Champagne, Lorraine, Montergis, and other parts of the kingdom, as a great invention; but I am firmly of opinion that this method was known and employed in Germany at a much earlier period[1433].

[Victor Hugo gives the following animated account of floating rafts. The traveller who ascends the river sees it, so to speak, coming to him, and then the sight is full of charms. At each instant he meets something which passes him; at one time, a vessel crowded with peasants, especially if it be Sunday; at another, a steam-boat; then a long, two-masted vessel, laden with merchandize, its pilot attentive and serious, its sailors busy, with women seated near the door of the cabin; here, a heavy-looking boat, dragging two or three after it; there, a little horse drawing a huge bark, as an ant drags a dead beetle. Suddenly there is a winding in the river; and formerly, on turning, an immense raft, a floating house, presented itself, the oars splashing on both sides. On the ponderous machine were cattle of all kinds, some bleating, and others bellowing, when they perceived the heifers peaceably grazing on the banks. The master came and went, looked at this, then at that, while the sailors busily performed their respective duties. A whole village seemed to live on this float,--on this prodigious construction of fir.]

The floating of wood seems, like many other useful establishments, to have been invented or first undertaken by private persons at their own risk and expense, with the consent of governments, or at least without any opposition from them; but, as soon as it was brought to be useful and profitable, to have been considered among regalia. Hence, therefore, soon arose the float-regal, which, indeed, on account of the free use granted of rivers, the many regulations requisite, and its connexion with the forest-regal, can be sufficiently justified. But when and where originated the term jus grutiæ, under which this regal is known by jurists?

The few authors who have turned their thoughts to this question have not been able, as far as I know, to answer it with certainty, nor even with probability. They have only repeated, without making any researches themselves, what Stypmann[1434] has said on the subject; and the latter refers to a passage of Hadrian Junius, which I shall here more particularly notice. Junius, speaking of the oldest families in the Netherlands, says that the family of Wassenaer had formerly a certain supremacy over the rivers in Rhineland, so that no one, without their permission, could keep swans on them, and that the brewers paid for the use of the water a certain tax called the gruyt-geld, from which arose the jus grutæ. The origin of this word he did not know; but he conjectured that it was derived either from gruta, which signifies duckweed (Lemna), a plant that grows in the water and covers its surface during the summer, or from grut, an ingredient used in making beer[1435]. It is certain that in the tenth, eleventh, and thirteenth centuries gruta, grutt, or gruit, signified a tax which brewers were obliged to pay[1436]; but the origin of the word has been sufficiently explained neither by Junius nor any other writer. I nowhere find that it was used in ancient times for a float-duty; and this meaning Junius himself has not so much as once mentioned.

The word gruit occurs under a quite different sense in a letter of investiture of the year 1593, by which the elector of Cologne gave as a fief to the countess of Moers, the gruit within the town of Berg, with all its rents, revenues, and appurtenances. “No other person was allowed to put grudt or any plant in beer, or to draw beer brought from other countries. On the other hand, the countess was to make good grutt, and to cause it to be sold at the price usual in the neighbouring parts; she was bound also to supply the elector gratis with what beer was necessary for family consumption; and if more was required than usual, on extraordinary occasions, she was to ask and receive money. If any one in the town did not deliver good gruidt, and should prove that he could not deliver better, as the fault was occasioned by the gruitte, the loss that might arise should fall upon the countess.” The word grut or gruitt seems to occur here under a double meaning; as an ingredient in the beer, and as the beer itself which was made from it. Of this difficulty I have in vain endeavoured to find an explanation. Grut, perhaps, may signify malt. In Dutch and other kindred languages grut means the small refuse which is separated from anything; and to which grusch bran, and grütze groats, have an affinity. May not ground malt be understood by it? I have thought likewise of a kind of herb-beer, which was much esteemed in the sixteenth century; and that grut might signify a mixture of herbs used for making that beer. It is probable that this word was confined within the boundaries of the Netherlands; and thence only, perhaps, is an explanation of it to be expected.

I am, however, still unable to comprehend how the float-duty obtained the name of jus grutiæ; and in our kindred languages I can find no derivation of it. The German word flosz, from fliessen, to flow or glide; flusz, a river, occurs in them all. The Dutch say vlot, vlothout; the Swedes, en flott, flotta, to float; flot-wed, float-wood; and the English, a float, to float, &c.

FOOTNOTES

[1417] Those who are desirous of particular information respecting everything that concerns the floating of wood may read Bergius, Polizey- und Camera-magazin, vol. iii. p. 156; Krunitz, Encylopedie, vol. xiv. p. 286; and the Forstmagazin, vol. viii. p. 1. To form an idea of the many laborious, expensive, and ingenious establishments and undertakings which are often necessary in this business, one may peruse Mémoire sur les Travaux qui ont Rapport à l’Exploitation de la Mâture dans les Pyrénées. Par M. Leroy. Londres et Paris, 1776, 4to. So early as the time of cardinal Richelieu the French began to bring from the Pyrenees timber for masts to their navy; but as the expense was very great, the attempt was abandoned, till it was resumed in the year 1758 by a private company, who entered into a contract with the minister for supplying the dock-yards with masts. After 1765 government took that business into their own hands; but it was attended with very great difficulties.

[1418] Plinius, lib. vi. cap. 56.--Strabo, lib. xvi. where he calls these rafts σχεδίαι.--Festus, p. 432.--Scheffer, De Militia Navali Veterum, lib. i. cap. 3.--Pitisci Lexicon Antiq. Rom. art. Rates.

[1419] “My servants shall bring them down from Lebanon unto the sea: and I will convey them by sea in floats unto the place that thou shalt appoint me.”--1 Kings, chap. v. ver. 9. “And we will cut wood out of Lebanon, as much as thou shalt need: and we will bring it to thee in floats by sea to Joppa; and thou shalt carry it up to Jerusalem.”--2 Chronicles, chap. ii. v. 16. Pocock thinks that the wood was cut down near Tyre. The accounts given by travellers of Mount Lebanon, and the small remains of the ancient forests of cedar, have been collected by Busching in his Geography.

The following is the account given of these cedars by the abbé Binos, who visited them in the year 1778. “Here,” says he, “I first discovered the celebrated cedars, which grow in an oval plain, about an Italian mile in circumference. The largest stand at a considerable distance from each other, as if afraid that their branches might be entangled, or to afford room for their tender shoots to spring up, and to elevate themselves also in the course of time. These trees raise their proud summits to the height of sixty, eighty, and a hundred feet. Three or four, when young, grow up sometimes together, and form at length, by uniting their sap, a tree of a monstrous thickness. The trunk then assumes generally a square form. The thickest which I saw might be about thirty feet round; and this size was occasioned by several having been united when young. Six others, which were entirely insulated, and free from shoots, were much taller, and seemed to have been indebted for their height to the undivided effects of their sap.” These cedars, formerly so numerous, are now almost entirely destroyed. In the year 1575, Rauwolff found twenty-four that stood round about in a circle, and two others, the branches whereof are quite decayed with age; Bellon, in 1550, counted twenty-eight old trees; Fremenet, in 1630, counted twenty-two; La Roque, in 1688, twenty; Maundrell, in 1696, sixteen; Dr. Pococke, in 1738, fifteen; and Schulze, in 1755, counted twenty, besides some young ones; Burckhardt, in 1810, eleven or twelve; Dr. Richardson, in 1818, eight; Mr. Robinson, in 1830, seven; Lord Lindsay, in 1836, seven. Mr. Buckingham, in 1816, differs greatly from the other authorities, computing the whole number of trees at two hundred, of which he describes twenty as being very large.--TRANS.

[1420] Antiquit. lib. viii. These letters have been printed by Fabricius in Codex Pseudepigraphus Veteris Testamenti, i. p. 1026.

[1421] Olymp. v. 29. Gesner, in explaining Pindar, translated φάος or φῶς by the word help, which Hebraism occurs in the New Testament, and also in Homer. The stream therefore assisted the inhabitants while under a great inconvenience.

[1422] Chanaan, i. 29, p. 605.

[1423] Herodot. lib. iii.

[1424] See Pindar, ed. Welsted, 1697, fol. p. 53 and 56, a, 37.

[1425] Vitruv. lib. ii. 9, p. 77.

[1426] Plin. lib. xvi. cap. 39, p. 33 and 34.

[1427] Codex Theodos. lib. xiii. tit. 5, 10. Lex xiii. p. 78. Compare Symmachi Epist. lib. x. ep. 58. As far as I know, such ordinances occur also in the Code of Justinian.

[1428] See Sammlung vermischter Nachrichten zur Sächsischen Geschichte, by G. J. Grundig and J. F. Klotzsch, vol. vi. 221.

[1429] Pertuchii Chronic. Portense, p. 54.

[1430] Rudolphi Gotha Diplomatica, pars i. p. 279.

[1431] See the Forest Laws in Fritschii Corp. Juris Ven. Forest.

[1432] Wood was conveyed in boats upon the Yonne so early as the year 1527. See Coquille in Histoire du Nivernois.

[1433] Traité de la Police, par De la Mare, iii. p. 839.--Savary, Dictionnaire de Commerce, art. Bois flotté and Train.

[1434] De Jure Maritimo, p. i. c. 10. n. 100.

[1435] H. Junii Batavia. Lugd. Bat. 1558, 4to, p. 327.--Hugo Grotius de Antiquitate Reipub. Batavicæ, cap. 4.--Délices de la Hollande. Amst. 1685, 12mo, p. 218: “Les Wassenaers tiennent leur origine d’une village qui est entre Leiden et la Haye, ou des droits qu’ils eurent les siecles passez sur les eaux, les estangs et les lacs de la Hollande.”---Those who are fond of indulging in conjecture might form the following conclusion:--The lakes and streams belonged to the Wassenaers, who kept swans, geese and ducks upon them. When the brewers were desirous of clearing the water from the duck-weed, which in Fritsch’s German Dictionary is called Enten-grutz, in order that it might be fitter for use, they were obliged to pay a certain sum to obtain permission; and when the practice of floating timber began, the floats disturbed the ducks, and destroyed the plant on which they fed, and the proprietors of floats were on this account obliged to pay a certain tax also. But was it customary at that period to float timber in the Netherlands?

[1436] Glossarium Manuale, iii. p. 850: “Gruta, Grutt, Gruit, appellant tributum, quod pro cerevisia pensitatur.”

LACE

Fifty years ago, when a knowledge of many useful and ingenious arts formed a part of the education given to young women destined for genteel life, one who should have supposed that any reader could be ignorant of the manner in which lace is made, would only have been laughed at; but as most of our young ladies at present employ the greater part of their time in reading romances or the trifles of the day, it is probable that many who have even had an opportunity of frequenting the company of the fair sex, may never have seen the method of working lace. For this reason, I hope I shall be permitted to say a few words in explanation of an art towards the history of which I mean to offer such information as I have been able to collect.

Proper lace or point was not wove. It had neither warp nor woof, but was rather knit after the manner of nets (filets) or of stockings. In the latter, however, one thread only is employed, from which the whole piece or article of dress is made; whereas lace is formed of as many threads as the pattern and breadth require, and in such a manner that it exhibits figures of all kinds. To weave, or, as it is called, knit lace, the pattern, stuck upon a slip of parchment, is fastened to the cushion of the knitting-box; the thread is wound upon the requisite number of spindles, which are called bobbins; and these are thrown over and under each other in various ways, so that the threads twine round pins stuck in the holes of the pattern, and by these means produce that multiplicity of eyes or openings which give to the lace the desired figures. For this operation much art is not necessary; and the invention of it is not so ingenious as that of weaving stockings. Knitting, however, is very tedious; and when the thread is fine and the pattern complex, it requires more patience than the modern refinement of manners has left to young ladies for works of this kind. Such labour, therefore, is consigned to the hands of indigent girls, who by their skill and dexterity raise the price of materials, originally of little value, higher when manufactured than has ever yet been possible by any art whatever. The price, however, becomes enormous when knit lace has been worked with the needle or embroidered: in French it is then called points.

The antiquity of this art I do not pretend to determine with much certainty; and I shall not be surprised if others by their observations trace it higher than I can. I remember no passage in the Greek or Latin authors that seems to allude to it; for those who ascribe works of this kind to the Romans found their opinion on the expression opus Phrygianum: but the art of the Phrygians[1437], as far as I have hitherto been able to learn, consisted only in needle-work: and those ingenious borders sewed upon clothes and tapestry, mention of which occurs in the ancients, cannot be called lace, as they have been by Braun[1438] and other writers. I am however firmly of opinion that lace worked by the needle is much older than that made by knitting. Lace of the former kind may be found among old church furniture, and in such abundance that it could have been the work only of nuns or ladies of fortune, who had little else to employ their time, and who imagined it would form an agreeable present to their Maker; for had it been manufactured as an article of commerce, we must certainly have found more information respecting it.

We read in different authors that the art of making lace was brought from Italy, particularly from Genoa and Venice, to Germany and France; but this seems to allude only to the oldest kind, or that worked with the needle, and which was by far the dearest. At any rate, I have nowhere found an expression that can be applied to lace wove or knit. In the account given of the establishment of the lace manufacture under Colbert in 1666, no mention is made but of points[1439].

I will venture to assert that the knitting of lace is a German invention, first known about the middle of the sixteenth century; and I shall consider as true, until it be fully contradicted, the account given us that this art was found out, before the year 1561, at St. Annaberg, by Barbara wife of Christopher Uttmann. This woman died in 1575, in the sixty-first year of her age, after she had seen sixty-four children and grandchildren; and that she was the inventress of this art is unanimously affirmed by all the annalists of that part of Saxony[1440]. About that period the mines were less productive, and the making of veils, an employment followed by the families of the miners, had declined, as there was little demand for them. This new invention, therefore, was so much used that it was known in a short time among all the wives and daughters of the miners; and the lace which they manufactured, on account of the low price of labour, soon became fashionable, in opposition to the Italian lace worked with the needle, and even supplanted it in commerce.

A doubt, however, has often occurred to me, which may probably occur also to some of my readers, that this Barbara Uttmann may be entitled only to the merit of having made known and introduced this employment; and that, as has often happened to those who first brought a new art to their own country, she may have been considered as the inventress, though she only learned it in a foreign land, where it had been long practised. But I conjecture that this could not have been the case, as I find no mention of the art of knitting lace, nor any of the terms that belong to it, before the middle of the sixteenth century.

[The application of machinery to the manufacture of lace dates from the early part of the present century. The original fabric, called pillow or bone-lace, which formerly gave employment to so many thousands[1441] of the poorer classes, is now, especially in this country, almost entirely abandoned, in consequence of the invention of the bobbin-net machinery.

The bobbin-net trade is a branch of the cotton manufacture, the net being almost invariably formed of that material. It originated in successive improvements and alterations on the stocking-frame, by which it was adapted to the weaving of lace; though it is deserving of notice that it could have had no existence but for Samuel Crompton’s invention, the mule, which spins yarn suitable for that delicate fabric. The application of the stocking-frame to lace-making was first attempted by a frame-work knitter of Nottingham, named Hammond, about 1768; but it was not rendered completely successful till after improvements by John Heathcoat, also of Nottingham, for which a patent was secured in 1809. His improvements were of so important a character as to entitle him to be justly considered the inventor of the lace-frame, and the father of the bobbin-net manufacture. Means were besides discovered for making the net into various widths, instead of only one broad piece as at first, and likewise to work various ornaments into it by the aid of machinery, which, in point of complex ingenuity, far surpasses that used in any other branch of human industry[1442]. One of Fisher’s spotting-frames, according to Dr. Ure, is as much beyond the most curious chronometer in multiplicity of mechanical device, as that is beyond a common roasting-jack. The combined effects of these improvements is, that fabrics, for which £5 were paid during the existence of Mr. Heathcoat’s patent, may now be purchased for 2_s._ 6_d._ The different systems of bobbin-net machines are described in Ure’s Dictionary, or his Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain. It has been found that no machines, except those upon the circular-bolt principle invented by Mr. Morley of Derby, have been found capable of working successfully by mechanical power.]

FOOTNOTES

[1437] This is proved by the vestes Phrygioniæ of Pliny mentioned before in the article on wire-drawing. Those who made such works were called phrygiones. In the Menæchmi of Plautus, act ii. scene 3, a young woman, desirous of sending her mantle to be embroidered, says, “Pallam illam ad phrygionem ut deferas, ut reconcinnetur, atque ut opera addantur, quæ volo.” Compare Aulul. act iii. scene 5; Non. Marcellus, i. 10; and Isidor. 19, 22. The Greeks seem to have used the words κεντεῖν and καταστίζειν as we use the word embroider.

[1438] De Vestitu Sacerdot. Hebræorum, i. p. 212.

[1439] Count de Marsan, the youngest son of count d’Harcourt, brought from Brussels to Paris his former nurse, named Du Mont, with her four daughters, and procured for her an exclusive right to establish and carry on the lace manufactory in that capital. In a little time Du Mont and her daughters collected more than two hundred women, many of whom were of good families, who produced such excellent work that it was in little or nothing inferior to that imported from other countries.--Vie de Jean-Bapt. Colbert, Cologne, 1696, 12mo, p. 154.

[1440] The oldest information on this subject is to be found in Annabergæ Urbis Historia, auctore Paulo Jenisio. Dresdæ, 1605, 4to, ii. p. 33.--C. Melzer, Berglauftige Beschreibung der Stadt Schneeberg. 1684, p. 471.--Historia Schneebergensis. Schneeberg 1716, 4to, p. 882.--Tob. Schmidt, Zwickauische Chronik. Zwickau, 1656, 4to. ii. p. 384.--Lehmanns Historischer Schauplatz des Obererzgebirges. Leipzig, 1699, 4to, p. 771.

[1441] It is difficult to form an estimate of the number of persons employed in pillow-lace making during its prosperity; but in a petition from the makers in Buckingham and the neighbourhood presented to her Majesty queen Adelaide in 1830, it was stated that 120,000 persons were dependent on the trade.

[1442] Waterston’s Encyclopædia of Commerce.

ULTRAMARINE

Ultramarine is a very fine blue powder, almost of the colour of the corn-flower or blue-bottle, which has this uncommon property, that, when exposed to the air or a moderate heat, it neither fades nor becomes tarnished. On this account it is used in painting; but it was employed formerly for that purpose much more than at present, as smalt, a far cheaper article, was not then known. It is made of the blue parts of the lapis lazuli, by separating them as much as possible from the other coloured particles with which they are mixed, and reducing them to a fine powder. The real lapis lazuli is found in the mountains of that part of Tartary called Bucharia, which extends eastwards from the Caspian sea, and particularly at Kalab and Budukschu. It is sent thence to the East Indies, and from the East Indies to Europe. The Bucharians also carry fragments of it, weighing sometimes a pound and more, to Orenburg, though less frequently than some years ago. As large pieces of a pure and beautiful colour are scarce even in that distant country, and as they are employed for making ornaments and toys, the rough stone itself is costly; and this high price is increased in the ultramarine by its laborious preparation, though in later times the process has been rendered much easier[1443].

On account of the scarcity and great value of the lapis lazuli, other stones, somewhat like it only in colour, have been substituted in its stead; and hence have arisen the many contradictions to be found in the works of different authors, particularly those of the ancients, where they speak of the properties and country of this species of stone. Many have considered the Armenian stone, which is a calcareous kind of stone tinged with copper; many the mountain blue or malachite, and many also blue sparry fluor, and blue jasper, as the lapis lazuli[1444]; and ultramarine of course is not always what it ought to be. At present, smalt of a good colour is often purchased therefore at a dear rate; and it is in greater request, as it is certain that its colour is more durable in fire than even that of the lapis lazuli. Good ultramarine must be of a beautiful dark colour, and free from sand as well as every other mixture. It must unite readily with oil; it must not become tarnished on a red-hot tile or plate of iron, and it ought to dissolve in strong acids, almost like the zeolite, without causing any effervescence. In the year 1763, an ounce of it at Paris cost four pounds sterling, and an ounce of cendre d’outremer, which is the refuse, two pounds. At Hamburg, Gleditsch sold fine real Oriental ultramarine for a ducat per ounce, and warranted it to stand proof by fire; but whether it would stand proof by acids also, I do not know.

From what has been said, a question arises, whether ultramarine was known to the ancient Greeks and Romans? And this gives occasion to another, whether they were acquainted with lapis lazuli? The name lapis lazuli no one indeed can expect to find among them; for it is certain that we received it from the Arabians; and the word ultramarinum is altogether barbarous Latin. Some centuries ago, many foreign articles, brought from beyond sea, had a name given them from that circumstance; and the ancients applied the epithet marinum to various productions on the like account. Hence, in the decline of the Roman language was formed ultramarinum, which some have endeavoured to improve by changing it into transmarinum, but this among the ancients never signified a colour.

Though the ancient names of precious stones have neither been examined with sufficient accuracy nor distinguished with the greatest possible certainty, I think I can discover among them the lapis lazuli. I consider it as the sapphire of the ancients, and this opinion has been entertained by others; but I hope to render it more probable than it has hitherto appeared. In the first place, the sapphire of the Greeks and Romans was of a sky-blue colour with a violet or purplish glance; and sometimes it had a very dark or almost blackish-blue colour. Secondly, this stone was not transparent. Thirdly, it had in it a great many gold points, or golden-yellow spots, but that which had fewest was most esteemed. Fourthly, it was polished and cut; but when it was not perfectly pure, and had mixed with it harder extraneous particles, it was not fit for the hands of the lapidary. Fifthly, it appears that it was procured in such large pieces that it could be employed for inlaid or mosaic-work. Sixthly, it was often confounded with, or compared to, copper-blue, copper-ore, and earth and stones impregnated with that metal. Seventhly, such medicinal effects were ascribed to it as could be possessed only by a copper salt; and lastly, it formed veins in rocks of other kinds of stone, as we are informed by Dionysius[1445].

That a stone with these properties cannot be the sapphire of our jewellers is beyond all doubt. Our real sapphire does not form veins in other fossils, but is found among sand in small crystals, shaped like diamonds; though they sometimes have rather the figure of columns. Like other precious stones, they are always transparent; they have never gold points in them; their blue colour resembles more or less that of blue velvet, and it is often very pale, and approaches seldom, or very little, to purple. Powder of sapphire appears like fine pounded glass, exhibits no traces of copper, and can in no manner produce a blue pigment, or be confounded with mountain-blue.

The question, whether the ancients were acquainted with our sapphire, and whether it may not belong to their amethysts or hyacinths, I shall not here examine. I am inclined rather to decide in the negative than the affirmative; and at any rate the proof will always remain dubious. It might perhaps be difficult also to determine whether every modern mineralogist who has spoken of the sapphire was acquainted with, and alluded to, the real stone of that name.

On the other hand, we can affirm with the greatest certainty, that the sapphire of the ancients was our lapis lazuli. The latter is of a blue colour, which inclines sometimes to violet or purple, and which is often very dark. It is altogether opake, yet its colour will admit of being compared to a sky-colour; in mentioning of which Pliny had no idea of transparency, for he compares the colour of an opake jasper to a sky-blue[1446]. The lapis lazuli is interspersed with small points, which were formerly considered as gold, but which are only particles of pyrites or marcasite. It can be easily cut and formed into articles of various kinds, and at present it is often used for seals. Pliny, however, informs us that it was not fit for this purpose when it was mixed with hard foreign particles, such as quartz; and that which was of one colour was therefore much more esteemed[1447]. Many cut stones of this kind, which are considered as antiques, may be found in collections. I remember to have seen several works of this sort in the excellent collection of the duke of Brunswick, which, in all probability, are Egyptian, and which are worthy of an accurate description. That lapis lazuli was used formerly for inlaid works I am well convinced, though at present I can produce no proofs. In how beautiful a manner it is employed for that purpose in Florentine works, is well known. The largest and most magnificent squares of lapis lazuli which I ever saw, are in the apartments at Zarskoe-Selo, a summer palace near Petersburg, belonging to the empress of Russia, the walls of which are covered with amber, interspersed with plates of this costly stone. I was informed that these plates were procured from Thibet. The doubt expressed by Epiphanius concerning stairs overlaid with lapis lazuli, respects only the great expense of it, and he perhaps imagined that the steps were entirely cut from the solid stone. The confounding the sapphire with the cyanus, or comparing it to it, of which several instances occur, proves that the former must have had a great resemblance to copper-ore; for that the cyanus is a kind of mineral or mountain blue, tinged with copper, I have proved already[1448]. The blue colour of lapis lazuli has always been supposed to be owing to copper; but according to the latest discoveries it originates from iron[1449]. The medicinal effects which the ancients ascribed to their sapphire could be produced only from a mixture of copper, as they considered the Armenian stone, or false lapis lazuli, to be the real kind. They recommended copper ochre for an inflammation of the eyes[1450]. In the last place it agrees with what Dionysius says, that the sapphire or lapis lazuli was produced in veins among other kinds of stone[1451]. The sapphire also mentioned in the oldest writings of the Hebrews, appears to be no other than the sapphire of the Greeks, or our lapis lazuli; for it was said likewise to be interspersed with gold points[1452].

The ancients therefore were acquainted with our lapis lazuli; but the question whether they used it as a paint, or prepared ultramarine from it, I cannot answer with sufficient certainty. It is possible that their cæruleum sometimes may have been real ultramarine; but properly and in general it was only copper ochre[1453]. The objection that the ancients made blue glass and blue enamel, and if they had not smalt they could use no other pigment that would stand fire but ultramarine, I shall answer in the next article.

Before I proceed to the oldest information with which I am acquainted respecting ultramarine, or the blue colour made from lapis lazuli, I shall communicate what I know of the origin and antiquity of the name commonly given to this stone. That I might be able to offer something more on the subject than what has been said by Salmasius[1454], I requested the opinion of Professor Tychsen, which, with his permission, I have here subjoined[1455]. It is, in the first place, certain that the word is of Persian derivation, and the stone, as I have already remarked, has hitherto been brought to us from Persia. Secondly, it signifies a blue colour. It was at first also the common name in Europe for blue stones and blue colours used in painting; and it was a long time used to express mountain-blue impregnated with copper. The modern systematic mineralogists, it appears, first appropriated the corrupted Persian word to the present lazur-stone, properly so-called; and those therefore would commit an error in mineralogy who should now apply this name to the Armenian stone, mountain-blue, or any other blue mineral containing copper.

Without pretending to have discovered the first mention of the name lazuli in those writings which have been handed down to us, I shall here offer, as the oldest with which I am acquainted, that found in Leontius[1456], who, where he gives directions for colouring a celestial globe, speaks of lazurium. If Fabricius be right, Leontius lived in the sixth century[1457]. Among the receipts for painting, written in the eighth century, which Muratori[1458] has made known, we find an unintelligible account how to make lazuri, for which cyanus compositus, perhaps a prepared kind of mountain-blue, was to be employed. There is also another receipt which orders blue-bottles to be pounded in a mortar. It appears therefore that this word was used in the corrupted Latin of that period to signify a blue colour for painting. The same word, formed after the Greek manner, seems to have been used for blue by Achmet, the astrologer, who lived in the ninth century[1459], and by Nonus in the tenth for a blue earth[1460]. Of still more importance is a passage of Arethas, who lived in the following century, and who, in his exposition of a verse in the book of Revelation[1461], says, the sapphire is that stone, of which lazurium, as we are told, is made[1462]. This, therefore, is a strong corroboration that the sapphire of the ancients was our lapis lazuli, and appears to be the first certain mention of real ultramarine. The word however occurs often in the succeeding centuries for blue copper-ochre. Constantinus Africanus, a physician of the eleventh century, ascribes to lapis lazuli the same medicinal qualities as those of copper-ochre[1463]; as do also Avicenna, Averroes, and Myrepsius. The first, under the letter lam, gives a chapter entitled lazuard, to which the translator has prefixed “De azulo, id est, de lapide Armenio;” and the last says expressly, that the lapis lazuli of the Latins is the lazurios of the Greeks[1464]. The words azura, azurum, azurrum, occur often also in that century for blue.

The name ultramarine, or, as it was first called, azurrum ultramarinum, I have not yet found in any writer of the fifteenth century. But it appears that it must have been common about the end of that century, as it was used by Camillus Leonardus in 1502[1465]. It is probable that it originated in Italy. In the first half of the sixteenth century Vanuccio Biringoccio gave directions for preparing the real ultramarine, which he distinguishes with sufficient accuracy from copper azur[1466], or, as he calls it, the azurro dell’ Alemagna. At that period, however, the best method of preparing it must have been doubtful as well as little known, and on that account of no great benefit; for, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, the father of the celebrated Giambatista Pigna, an apothecary at Modena, was in possession of the secret for making the best ultramarine, by which he acquired more riches than would have arisen from a large estate[1467]. It is not, therefore, altogether true that Alexius Pedemontanus, as Spielmann relates[1468], was the first person who mentioned ultramarine. I am of opinion that this Alexius, or Hieronymus Ruscellai concealed under that name, who wrote in the beginning of the sixteenth century, only first published a complete account of the method of preparing it. At any rate, his receipt was long followed as the best and the most certain[1469]. But on what information is that assertion founded, which we read in English and French authors[1470], that the preparation of ultramarine was found out in England, and that a servant of the East India Company disclosed it, in order to be revenged for some injury which he had sustained?

[The following is the method of making ultramarine from lapis lazuli. The finest mineral is selected, heated to a dull red heat, and quenched in water; it is thus rendered friable, and is ground down into an impalpable powder. This is then mixed with a tenacious paste made of linseed oil, wax, resin, turpentine and mastic; and the mixture being kneaded in warm water gives out the blue particles, which are afterwards collected by subsidence.

Chemists are not agreed concerning the cause of the colour of ultramarine. Dr. Eisner considers it to arise from sulphuret of sodium and of iron, the former being a higher sulphuret than the latter. MM. Clement and Desormes show that the iron is not essential, either to the lapis lazuli, or to the pigment made from it.

An artificial method of making ultramarine was discovered in 1828 by M. Guimet; the process has been kept secret. Processes have also been discovered by M. Gmelin of Tübingen, M. Persoz of Strasburg, and others. M. Gmelin’s process consists in fusing a mixture of two parts of sulphur and one of dry carbonate of soda in a Hessian crucible, and then sprinkling into it by degrees another mixture of silicate of soda and aluminate of soda. The crucible must be exposed to the fire for an hour after this. The ultramarine thus prepared contains a little sulphur, which can be separated by means of water.

Some valuable observations on this subject have lately been published by M. Prückner[1471]. He states that the materials required in the preparation of ultramarine are alumina, sulphate of soda, sulphur, charcoal and a salt of iron, the common sulphate or green vitriol being the best. The alumina is supplied in white bole, or a very pure white clay. The sulphate of soda is reduced by charcoal and heat to the state of sulphuret, and its solution thus obtained afterwards boiled with sulphur so as to form a persulphuret (penta-sulphuret, Berz.). The solution is then mixed with the dried clay and stirred; during the mixing a solution of green vitriol is added and mixed. It is then dried and very finely powdered as rapidly as possible. It is afterwards heated in a muffle; then washed, drained and again heated in a muffle; finally it is again washed, dried and powdered.]

FOOTNOTES

[1443] The old method of preparing ultramarine may be found in De Boot, Gemmarum Histor. Lugd. Bat. 1647, 8vo, p. 279. Formerly ultramarine was improperly called a precipitate or magisterium.

[1444] Besides the before-mentioned proofs of the real lapis lazuli being found in Tartary, the same thing is confirmed by Tavernier in his Travels. Paulus Venetus also seems to speak of that country when he says, “Suppeditat quoque mons alius in hac provincia (Balascia) lazulum, de quo fit azurum optimum, quale etiam in mundo non invenitur. Elicitur autem ex mineris non secus ac ferrum; præbent quoque mineræ argentum.” A great many however assert that this species of stone is brought from Persia: but it is not indigenous in that country, and is carried thither from Thibet. As the Persians are remarkably fond of this paint, they endeavour to procure as much of it as possible; but Persia itself produces only the blue copper ochre, which is sometimes used there instead of ultramarine. Tavernier mentions this very particularly, and, as he dealt in precious stones, was not liable to be deceived. To rectify a prevailing mistake, I shall here insert his own words:--“In the copper mines of Persia, veins of lazur, which is much used in that country, and with which the flowers on the ceiling and roofs of apartments are painted, have also been found. Before these were discovered, the Persians had no other lazur than the real kind which comes from Tartary, and is exceedingly dear. The Persian lazur is a sort of copper ore; and when the stone is pounded and sifted, which is the process employed with the real kind, it forms a fine paint, which appears very bright and pleasant. After this discovery, the Persians durst no more purchase the Tartarian lazur; and Mahomet-Beg issued an order that painters should not use foreign but Persian lazur. This prohibition however did not long continue; for the Persian lazur could not stand the effects of the atmosphere like the real kind, but in the course of time became of a dark and dismal colour. Sometimes it was full of scales, and would not hang to the end of a soft hair brush. On this account it was soon neglected as a coloured earth, and the lazur of Tartary again introduced.” This information is confirmed also by Chardin, in Voyages en Perse, iv. p. 66. “In the country around Tauris,” says the author, “is found lapis lazuli, but it is not so good as that of Tartary, as its colour changes, becomes dark, and afterwards fades.” In page 255, he says likewise, “The lapis lazuli, called lagsverd, from which we have formed the word azur, is found in the neighbourhood, in the country of the Yousbecs, but the general magazine for it is Persia.” I do not believe that this species of stone was formerly procured from Cyprus, as is asserted in many books. Copper is a production of that island, and it produces even at present mountain blue. Those also who assert that the colour of ultramarine fades in the fire, must not have been acquainted with the genuine sort. See Schriften der Schwedischen Acad. xii. p. 69. Montamy, in Abhandlung von den Farben zum Porzellan, Leipzig, 1767, 8vo, p. 121, affirms that ultramarine is not good for enamel-painting, but it is certain that it was once used for that purpose.

[1445] See Plin. lib. xxxvii. cap. 9 and 10.--Isidori Orig. xvi. 9.--Theophrast. de Lapid. § 43.--Dioscorides, v. 157.--Dionys. Orb. Desc. v. 1105.--Epiphanius de xii gemmis, § 5.--Marbodeus de Lapidibus, 53, p. 46.

[1446] Lib. ii. p. 782. Jaspis aërizusa--which I certainly do not, with Salmasius, consider as the turquoise. We have blue jasper still.

[1447] Plin. Inutiles scalpturæ, intervenientibus crystallinis centris.--Several learned men have understood this passage as if Pliny said that the sapphire could not be cut; but they seem not to have attended properly to the author’s words, and to have forgot what the ancient artists called centra in stones and different kinds of wood which were to be cut. This Pliny himself explains, b. xvi. c. 39. In b. xxxvii. c. 2, he reckons also “prædurum ac fragile centrum” among the faults of rock crystal, which however, when it had not this blemish, was very proper for being cut. Theophrastus uses in the same sense the word κέντρον.

[1448] Aristotelis Auscultat. Mirabil. cap. 59, p. 123.

[1449] Systema Mineralium. i. p. 313.

[1450] Dioscorides, Parabil. i. p. 10, 11.

[1451] Some years ago my former colleague, H. Laxman, discovered lapis lazuli in veins of granite near Baikal in Siberia. These veins contained also along with it felspar and a milky-coloured kind of stone, perhaps zeolite, like pyrites.

[1452] Braun de Vestitu Sacerdotum. ii. p. 530.--See Michaelis Supplementa ad Lexica Hebraica, num. 1775. The name sapphire is very ancient.

[1453] Plin. lib. xxxiii. cap. 13.--Aristot. Auscult. Mirab. p. 123.

[1454] De Homonymis Hyles Iatricæ. Trajecti ad Rhenum, 1689, fol. p. 217.

[1455] Lazul or lazur is not of Arabic, but Persian extraction. Ladschuardi or lazuardi in Persian signifies a blue colour and lapis lazuli. It ought properly to be pronounced lazuverd; but the Arabs in their pronunciation contract the v very much, so that it sounds like u; and one can say therefore lazurd. The derivative lazurdi or lazuverdi signifies blue.

The pronunciation lazul, with an l at the end, is agreeable to the common custom among the Arabs of confounding l and r; as instead of zingiber they say zengebil. The initial l is not the article, but seems to belong to the word itself, because it is not originally Arabic. It is worthy of remark, that the Spaniards call blue azul, which is plainly derived from the above word; and the l has been omitted because it was considered as the article, and thus the word was mutilated, as is often the case with foreign words among the Arabs, who say, for example, Escandria, instead of al Escandria (Alexandria).

[1456] Leontius de Constructione Arateæ Sphæræ, in Astronomica Veterum Scripta, 1589, 8vo, p. 144.

[1457] Biblioth. Græca, ii. p. 456.

[1458] Antiquitat. Ital. Medii Ævi, ii. p. 372, 378.

[1459] Introductio in Astrolog.

[1460] De Morb. Curat. cap. 143.

[1461] Chap. xxi. ver. 19.

[1462] The exposition of Arethas is printed with Œcumenii Comm. in Nov. Test. Paris, 1630, 2 vols. fol.

[1463] De Gradibus, quos vocant Simplicium, p. 362. This passage serves further to explain and confirm what I have said respecting Aristotelis Auscultat. Mirab. cap. 59, where we are told that copper-ochre promotes the growth of the hair and of the eye-brows. The works of Constantinus were printed at Basle, 1536-39, in two folio volumes.

[1464] Matth. Silvaticus says, “Lapis lazuli Latinis, Arabibus Hager alzenar sive alzanar;” and also, “Lauzud. Arab. Azurinum, lapis lazuli.”

[1465] Speculum Lapidum. Hamb. 1717, 8vo, p. 125.

[1466] Of azur there are two sorts, one called by painters azurro oltramarino, and the other azurro dell’ Alemagna. The ultramarine is that made of the stone known by the name of lapis lazuli, which is the proper matrix of gold ore. This stone, after being pounded and washed, is reduced to an impalpable powder. It is then brought back to its lively and beautiful colour by means of a certain paste composed with gum, and is refined and freed from all moisture. This kind is that most esteemed; and according to its colour and fineness is purchased at a high price by painters; for it not only adds great beauty to paintings, but it withstands fire and water--two powers which other colours are not able to resist.--Pirotechnia, p. 38. The German azur of Biringoccio is not smalt; for he describes that colour before under the name of zaffera.

See also Fallopius, who in 1557 wrote his book De Metallis seu Fossilibus, chap, xxxiii. p. 338, who observes that ultramarine was then selling for 100 golden scudi per ounce.

[1467] As young Pigna applied too closely to study, Bartholom. Ricci, in a letter still extant, advised him to be more moderate, as he was not compelled by necessity to labour so hard. “Without it,” he observes, “you are possessed of an estate sufficiently ample. Farms, country and town houses, the choicest furniture, all your own: besides, you have a father who is as good as a hundred estates to you; who in preparing one blue colour, called ultramarine (to say nothing of his skill and large profits in compounding medicines), has exclusively the secret, and is thereby enabled to acquire great riches, and indeed is daily adding to his store.”--Riccii Opera, vol. ii. p. 336; and Tirabosci Bibliotheca Modenese, vol. iv. p. 134.

[1468] Institut. Chemiæ, p. 45.

[1469] The work of Alexius Pedemontanus De Secretis is no contemptible source from which materials may be drawn for the technological History of Inventions; and on this account it will perhaps afford pleasure to many if I here give an account of the author, according to such information as I have been able to obtain. Conrad Gesner seems not to have known anything of him, as he is not mentioned either in his Epistolæ Medicinales or his Bibliotheca. Ciaconius, in Bibliotheca Libros et Scriptores fere cunctos complectens, Parisiis, 1731, fol. p. 94, says that his real name was Hieronymus Ruscellai. The same account is given by Haller in Biblioth. Botan., &c. Gobet, in Les Anciens Minéralogistes de France, Paris, 1779, 8vo, ii. p. 705, tells us that this Jerome Ruscellai died in 1565; and that his book was composed from his papers by Franc. Sansovino, who published many works not his own, and printed for the first time at Milan, in 1557. I have nowhere found a particular account of this Ruscellai; and indeed it is always laborious to search out any of that noble family, which I have already spoken in the article Lacmus. He appears to me to be none of those mentioned in Jochers Gelehrten-Lexicon. I have met with no earlier edition of his works than that of 1557: but I suspect that the first must be older. However much the book may have been sought after, it seems to me improbable that three editions should be published in Italian in the course of the first year; for, besides that of Milan, two editions printed at Venice the same year, one in quarto and another in octavo, are still extant. A French translation also was published at Antwerp, in 1557. Is it possible that an English translation could be published at London in 1558, if the original appeared for the first time only in 1557? At that period translations were not made so speedily. The Secrets of Alexis, London, 1558, is mentioned in Ames’s Typographical Antiquities, p. 296. I have in my possession a French translation by Christofle Landré, Paris, 1576, 12mo, which I seldom find quoted. It has a large appendix, collected from various authors.

It is well-known that Joh. Jacob Wecker, a physician at Colmar, translated into Latin this book of Alexius, and enlarged it with additions, under the title of De Secretis Libri xvii. The first edition, as Haller says, was printed at Basle in 1559, 8vo. Every edition seems to differ from the preceding; many things are omitted, and the new additions are for the most part of little importance. I have the edition of Basle, 1592, 8vo, in which there is a great deal not to be found in that of 1662, and which wants some things contained in the edition of 1582. The latest editions are printed from that improved by Theod. Zwinger, Basle, 1701, 8vo. The last by Zwinger, was published at Basle in 1753. Though these books on the arts, as they are called, contain many falsehoods, they are still worthy of some notice, as they may be reckoned among the first works printed on technology, and have as much induced learned men to pay attention to mechanics and the arts, as they have artists to pay attention to books and written information.

[1470] See Savary, Dict. de Commerce, art. Outremer, which has been copied into Rolt’s Dictionary of Trade, Lond. 1756, fol.

[1471] Chemical Gazette, May 31, 1845.

COBALT, ZAFFER, SMALT

The name cobalt is given at present to that metal and its ores, the oxides of which are largely employed in the manufactures of glass, porcelain and pottery, for the production of a blue colour. The cobalt ores are first roasted and freed from foreign mineral bodies, particularly sulphur, iron, nickel, bismuth, and arsenic, with which they are united, and then well calcined, and sold, either mixed or unmixed with fine sand, under the name of zaffer (zaffera); or the cobalt is melted with siliceous earth and potash to a kind of blue glass called smalt, which, when ground very fine, is known in commerce by the name of powder-blue. All these articles, because they are most durable pigments, and those which best withstand fire, and because one can produce with them every shade of blue, are employed, above all, for tinging crystal and for enamelling; for counterfeiting opake and transparent precious stones, and for painting and varnishing real porcelain and earthen and potters’ ware. This colour is indispensably necessary to the painter when he is desirous of imitating the fine azure colour of many butterflies and other natural objects; and the cheaper kind is employed to give a blueish tinge to new-washed linen, which so readily changes to a disagreeable yellow.

The preparation of this new colour may be reckoned among the most beneficial inventions of modern times. It rendered of importance an useless and hurtful production; gave employment to a number of hands; assisted in bringing many arts to a degree of perfection which they could never before attain; and has drawn back to Germany a great deal of money which was formerly sent out of it for foreign articles.

Though there is no doubt that the process used in the preparation of cobalt and smalt was invented about the end of the fifteenth or the beginning of the sixteenth century, we have reason to ask whether the ancients were acquainted with cobalt, and if they employed it for colouring glass. They opened and worked mines in various parts; and it is at any rate possible that they may have found cobalt; they made many successful attempts to give different tints to glass[1472]; and they produced blue glass and blue enamel. They may have learned by an accident to make this glass, as they did to make brass; and they may have continued to make the former as long as their supply of coloured earth lasted. When the mineral failed them, they may have lost the art, in the same manner as the method of preparing Corinthian brass[1473] was lost for a considerable space of time. The use of cobalt does not imply a knowledge of its metal; for the moderns made brass and smalt for whole centuries, before they learned to prepare zinc and regulus of cobalt.

It seems, however, difficult to answer this question; for one can scarcely hope to discover cobalt with any certainty among those minerals mentioned by the ancients. They could describe minerals in no other manner than according to their exterior appearance, the country where they were found, or the use to which they applied them. Now there is no species more various and more changeable in its figure and colour than cobalt ore, which on this account shows the impossibility of distinguishing minerals with sufficient accuracy by external characteristics. Besides, there are scarcely two passages of the ancients which seem to allude to it; and these, when closely examined, give us little or no information.

The meaning of the term cadmia is as various and uncertain as that of the word cobalt was two centuries ago. It signified often calamine; sometimes furnace-dross; and perhaps, in later times, also arsenic; but, as far as I know, it was never applied to cobalt till mineralogists wished in modern times to find a Latin term for it[1474], and assumed that which did not belong properly to any other mineral. The well-known passage of Pliny[1475], in which Lehmann thinks he can with certainty distinguish cobalt, is so singular a medley that nothing to be depended on can be gathered from it. The author, it is true, where he treats of mineral pigments, seems to speak of a blue sand which produced different shades of blue paint, according as it was pounded coarser or finer. The palest powder was called lomentum; and this Lehmann considers as our powder-blue. I am however fully convinced that the cyanus of Theophrastus, the cæruleum of Pliny, and the chrysocolla[1476], were the blue copper earth often already mentioned, which may have been mixed and blended together. Besides, Pliny clearly adds to it an artificial colour, which in my opinion was made in the same manner as our lake; for he speaks of an earth, which when boiled with plants, acquired their blue colour, and which was in some measure inflammable. With these pigments walls were painted; but as many of them would not endure lime, they could be used only on those which were plastered with clay (creta). The expression usus ad fenestras has been misapplied by Lehmann, as a strong proof of his assertion; for he explains it as if Pliny had said that a blue pigment was used for painting window-frames; but glass windows were at that time unknown. I suspect Pliny meant to say only that one kind of paint could not be employed near openings which afforded a passage to the light, as it soon decayed and lost its colour. This would have been the case in particular with lake in which there was a mixture of vegetable particles.

For my part, I find in this passage as few traces of smalt as M. Gmelin; and I agree with him in opinion that the strong and unpleasant mixtures arising from cobalt would, had it been known, have induced the ancients to make particular mention of it in their writings. Would not the arsenic, which is so often combined with cobalt, have given occasion to many reports respecting the dangerous properties of these minerals? And would not arsenic and bismuth have been sooner known, had preparations of cobalt been made at so early a period? It is a circumstance of great weight also, that in the places where the ancients had mines, and where antiquities painted or tinged blue, and resembling in colour that produced by cobalt, have been dug up, cobalt has not been discovered, or has been discovered only in modern times. At present we know nothing of Egyptian, Arabian, Ethiopian, Italian, and Cyprian cobalt; and in Spain[1477] this mineral was first found in the reign of Philip IV. I shall here observe, that the island of Cyprus was formerly so abundant in copper, that, in a mineralogical sense, it might be called the island of Venus; and we can therefore entertain the less doubt that the cæruleum Cyprium was copper-blue.

The principal reason, however, why Lehmann, Pauw[1478], Ferber, Delaval, and others, think that the ancients used smalt, and were acquainted with cobalt, is that, as has been already said, various antiquities both of painting and enamel have been discovered, in which a blue appears that seems to give grounds for conjecturing that it was produced by cobalt. Ferber[1479] speaks of blue glass squares in mosaic-work; and Delaval mentions old Egyptian glass-work of this colour[1480]. It is well known also that the Chinese and people of Japan gave to their porcelain that fine blue colour, for which it is celebrated, long before the discovery of smalt in Europe. On mummies a blue is seen likewise, which, even after so many centuries, seems to have lost little or nothing of its beauty[1481]. We must therefore allow that the ancients used either ultramarine or cobalt.

The first opinion seems, in regard of porcelain, to be confirmed by Duhalde[1482], who speaks of a mine of azur, and relates that the Chinese, in modern times, use instead of it, for painting their porcelain, a blue colour brought from foreign countries. It is probable that by the former he means lapis lazuli, and by the latter smalt, which is sent in large quantities from Europe to China. The invention of ultramarine, however, appears to me too new, its effect on porcelain too uncertain, and its price too high to allow us to suppose that it has been much used. We should therefore have been almost obliged to adopt the latter opinion, had not M. Gmelin proved by chemical experiments[1483] that it is not only possible to give to glass and enamel a blue colour by means of iron, but that the before-mentioned antiquities, upon which so much stress has been laid, show not the smallest traces of cobalt. He even made experiments upon blue tiles, found in a Roman tessellated foot-pavement at Montbeillard; and likewise on the blue paint of the mummy which was presented to our university by the king of Denmark[1484]. He has also mentioned various articles on which a blue colour is produced by the vitrification of iron. Of this nature are in particular those slags found near the smelting-houses at the iron-mines of the Harz forest; and I myself have seen slags which were of a blue colour exceedingly beautiful. Volcanic slags, or scoriæ, found in the neighbourhood of Verona, Vicenza, and other parts of Italy, are mentioned also by Ferber[1485], which seems to confirm the conjecture of Dr. Bruckmann[1486], that the ancients may have used such slags for their works. It is probable that the ancients were first induced by the blue slag of their smelting-houses to make experiments on the colouring of glass with iron, and that in this art they acquired a dexterity not possessed at present, because it was abandoned by our ancestors after the invention of smalt, which is much more beautiful; and which can be used more easily and with more certainty. I cannot, however, deny that I have often lamented this loss when I saw the excellent blue in the painted windows at Gouda, Goslar, and other places; though its beauty is much heightened by the transparency of the glass, and the strong light that falls upon it from without.

I shall now proceed to the invention of the colour prepared from cobalt. About the end of the fifteenth century, cobalt appears to have been dug up in great quantity in the mines on the borders of Saxony and Bohemia, discovered not long before that period. As it was not known at first to what purpose it could be applied, it was thrown aside as a useless mineral. The miners had an aversion to it, not only because it gave them much fruitless labour, but because it often proved prejudicial to their health by the arsenical particles with which it was combined; and it appears even that the mineralogical name cobalt then first took its rise. At any rate, I have never met with it before the beginning of the sixteenth century; and Mathesius and Agricola seem to have first used it in their writings. Frisch derives it from the Bohemian word kow, which signifies metal; but the conjecture that it was formed from cobalus, which was the name of a spirit that, according to the superstitious notions of the times, haunted mines, destroyed the labours of the miners, and often gave them a great deal of unnecessary trouble, is more probable; and there is reason to think that the latter is borrowed from the Greek. The miners, perhaps, gave this name to the mineral out of joke, because it thwarted them as much as the supposed spirit, by exciting false hopes and rendering their labour often fruitless[1487]. It was once customary, therefore, to introduce into the church service a prayer that God would preserve miners and their works from kobolts and spirits.

Respecting the invention of making a useful kind of blue glass from cobalt, we have no better information than that which Klotzsch[1488] has published from the papers of Christian Lehmann. The former, author of an historical work respecting the upper district of the mines in Misnia, and a clergyman at Scheibenberg, collected with great diligence every information in regard to the history of the neighbouring country, and died, at a great age, in 1688. According to his account, the colour-mills, at the time when he wrote, were about a hundred years old; and as he began first to write towards the end of the thirty years’ war, the invention seems to fall about 1540 or 1560. He relates the circumstance as follows: “Christopher Schurer, a glass-maker at Platten, a place which belongs still to Bohemia, retired to Neudeck, where he established his business. Being once at Schneeberg, he collected some of the beautiful coloured pieces of cobalt which were found there, tried them in his furnace; and finding that they melted, he mixed some cobalt with the vitreous mass, and obtained fine blue glass. At first he prepared it only for the use of the potters; but in the course of time it was carried as an article of merchandize to Nuremberg, and thence to Holland. As painting on glass was then much cultivated in the latter, the artists there knew better how to appreciate this invention. Some Dutchmen therefore repaired to Neudeck, in order that they might learn the process used in preparing this new colour. By great promises they persuaded the inventor to remove to Magdeburg, where he also made glass from the cobalt of Schneeberg; but he again returned to his former residence, where he constructed a hand-mill to grind his glass, and afterwards erected one driven by water. At that period the colour was worth seven dollars and a half per cwt., and in Holland from fifty to sixty florins. Eight colour-mills of the same kind, for which roasted cobalt was procured in casks from Schneeberg, were soon constructed in Holland; and it appears that the Dutch must have been much better acquainted with the art of preparing, and particularly with that of grinding it, than the Saxons; for the elector John George sent for two colour-makers from Holland, and gave a thousand florins towards enabling them to improve the art. He was induced to make this advance chiefly by a remark of the people of Schneeberg, that the part of the cobalt which dropped down while it was roasting contained more colour than the roasted cobalt itself. In a little time other colour-mills were erected around Schneeberg. Hans Burghard, a merchant and chamberlain of Schneeberg, built one by which the eleven mills at Platten were much injured. Paul Nordhoff, a Frieslander, a man of great ingenuity, who lived at the Zwitter-mill, made a great many experiments in order to improve the colour, by which he was reduced to so much poverty that he was at length forced to abandon that place, where he had been employed for ten years in the colour-manufactory. He retired to Annaberg, established there in 1649, by the assistance of a merchant at Leipsic, a colour-manufactory, of which he was appointed the director; and by these means rendered the Annaberg cobalt of utility. The consumption of this article however must have decreased in the course of time; for in the year 1659, when there were mills of the same kind at more of the towns in the neighbourhood of mines, he had on hand above 8000 quintals.” Thus far Lehmann.

This information is in some measure confirmed by Melzer[1489], who says that the mines of Schneeberg, which were first discovered in the middle of the fifteenth century, had declined so much towards the middle of the sixteenth, that it was impossible to get any profit by them till the year 1550, when a greater advantage arose from the new method of using cobalt. About this period a contract was entered into with the Dutch, who agreed to take the roasted cobalt at a certain price. Lehmann[1490] says, but without adducing any proofs, that a manufactory for making blue glass was erected by Sebastian Preussler, between Platten and Eybenstock, so early as 1571. Rossler[1491], who died in 1673, in the seventy-sixth year of his age, gives us to understand that a century and a half before his time, cobalt was procured and sold as zaffer; but that the colour-mills in the country had been established only about sixty years. I conjecture therefore that the roasted cobalt, to which sand was added, in order that the nature of it might be better concealed, and the further preparation of it rendered more difficult, was given up to the Dutch, even so early as the beginning of the sixteenth century[1492], and that these people by melting it anew, or at any rate by pounding it finer, derived the greatest benefit from it long before the Saxons themselves constructed mills according to the model of those used in Holland. At present many Dutchmen grind German cobalt with very great advantage[1493].

It appears that this new colour was not made known in books till a late period. Agricola was not acquainted with the blue glass, nor is zaffera mentioned either by him or Mathesius. Albin also, who indeed derived the greater part of his information from these two writers, says not a word respecting it; but he tells us that bismuth when put in vessels grew together again[1494]. He seems therefore to allude to cobalt roasted and mixed with sand, which when packed up becomes a solid body, whereas bismuth which has been purified by roasting can never assume that state. Vanuccio Biringoccio, the oldest writer in whose works I have as yet observed the name zaffera, describes its use for painting glass, and calls it a heavy mineral, without defining it any further. Cardan[1495] gives the name of zaffera to an earth which colours glass blue. Cæsalpin says it is a stone[1496]; and Julius Scaliger must have known as little of it, else he would have mentioned it in his Exercitations on Cardan. Porta, who employed great diligence to acquire knowledge of this kind, often mentions zaphara figlinorum, without telling us what it is; but he describes how it must be melted, poured into water, pounded, sifted, and reduced into a fine powder in order to be employed for making artificial precious stones[1497]. Neri, who wrote about the year 1609[1498], knew nothing more of it; and Merret, the commentator on Neri, who lived in the middle of the sixteenth century[1499], confesses that he knew not what zaffera was, but he believed that it was a new German invention, at least that it was brought from Germany, and that it seemed to him to be made from copper and sand, with the addition perhaps of calamine. The first person who properly explained zaffera in his writings, and gave a correct account of the method of preparing it, is, in my opinion, Kunkel[1500] in his annotations on Neri and Merret. That writer says, zaffera was by the miners called zafloer, and that sand was mixed with it only that the powder-blue used by women for linen, and by painters called blue smalt, might not be imitated in other countries.

Rosler says the Bohemian cobalt is not so good as that of Misnia, and that its colour is more like that of ashes. That Brandt, a member of the Council of Mines in Sweden, first asserted that cobalt contained a peculiar kind of metal, must be so well known to mineralogists, that it scarcely deserves to be mentioned[1501].

FOOTNOTES

[1472] See what is said under the article Artificial Rubies.

[1473] See the Annotations on Arist. Auscult. Mirab. p. 98.

[1474] I am of opinion that this Latin name for cobalt was first used by Agricola.

[1475] Lib. xxxiii. cap. 13. Theophrast. De Lapid. § 97.

[1476] Aristot. Auscult. Mirab. p. 123.

[1477] Bowles, Introducion à la Historia Natural y à la Geographia Fisica de España.--Madrit, 1775 p. 399.

[1478] Recherches Philosophiques sur les Egyptiens et les Chinois. Berlin, 1773, i. p. 345.--Delaval’s Experimental Inquiry into the Cause of the Changes of Colour in Opake and Coloured Bodies. Lond. 1774, 4to, p. 56.

[1479] Briefe aus Welschland. Prag, 1773, 8vo, p. 114, 136, 223.

[1480] Blue enameled figures of the Egyptian deities may be found in Marbres de la Galerie de Dresde, tab. 190.

[1481] [The blue colour of the glass, of which the beautiful Portland Vase is composed, is owing to cobalt.]

[1482] Déscription de la Chine, ii. p. 223, 230, 232. I have, however, often heard, and even remarked myself, that the blue on the new Chinese porcelain is not so beautiful as that on the old.

[1483] De Cæruleo Vitro in Antiquis Monumentis, in Comment. Soc. Götting. 1779, vol. ii. p. 41.

[1484] Comment. Soc. Götting. 1781, iv. p. 20.

[1485] Briefe, p. 30.

[1486] Beytrage zu der Abhand. v. Edelsteinen. Bruns. 1778, 8vo, p. 55.

[1487] Mathesius, in his tenth Sermon, p. 501, where he speaks of the cadmia fossilis, says, “Ye miners call it kobolt; the Germans call the black devil, and the old devil’s whores and hags, old and black kobel, which by their witchcraft do injury to people and to their cattle.”... Whether the devil, therefore, and his hags gave this name to cobalt, or cobalt gave its name to witches, it is a poisonous and noxious metal. Agricola, De Animantibus Subterraneis, says, at the end, “Dæmones, quos Germanorum alii, aut etiam Græci, vocant cobalos, quod hominum sunt imitatores.” Bochart, in his Canaan, i. 18, p. 484, gives a Hebrew derivation of κόβαλος. It appears to be the same as covalus and gobelinus, the latter of which was used by Ordericus Vitalis in the eleventh century as the name of a spirit or phantom. See Menage, Diction. Etymol. i. 681.

[1488] Sammlung zur Sächsischen Geschichte, iv. p. 363.

[1489] Melzer’s Berglauftige Beschreibung der Stadt Schneeberg, 1684, 4to, p. 405. The same account is given in his Historia Schneebergensis, 1716, 4to. In these works one may see the dispositions made from time to time by the electors of Saxony, to support this highly profitable manufacture. The latest information on this subject is to be found in Hoffmann’s Abhandlung über die Eisenhütten, Hof. 1785, 4to.

[1490] Cadmiologia, i. p. 14.

[1491] Speculum Metallurgiæ Politissimum. Dresden, 1700, fol. p. 165.

[1492] I say, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, on the authority of the following information in Melzer, which seems not to have been noticed by others:--“Peter Weidenhammer, a Franconian, came hither poor; but by means of a colour he procured from pounded bismuth, and of which he exported many quintals to Venice, at the rate of twenty-five dollars per quintal, he soon acquired great riches, and built a beautiful house in the market-place. His name is inscribed in the lower window of the chancel of the great church, with the date 1520.” At that period a great deal of this paint was prepared at Venice, and it may therefore be easily comprehended how Vannuccio could be so early acquainted with zaffera.

[1493] How early manufactories for blue paint were erected beyond the boundaries of Saxony and Bohemia I do not know, as I have found no information on that subject. We are however told by Calvor, in Beschreibung des Maschinenwesens am Oberharze, ii. p. 202, that a person was engaged to superintend the blue-paint-manufactory at St. Andreasberg in the year 1698.

[1494] Meisnische Bergchronik, p. 133, tit. 16.

[1495] Lib. v. De Subtil.

[1496] Lib. ii. cap. 55.

[1497] Magiæ Naturalis lib. vi.

[1498] De Arte Vitriaria. Amst. 1668, 12mo, lib i. cap. 12, p. 32.

[1499] Ibid. p. 327.

[1500] Glasmacherkunst. Nurnb. 1743, 4to, p. 46.

[1501] Act. Lit. et Scient. Upsal, 1733. Wallerii Syst. Min. ii. p. 164.

TURKEYS

That these fowls, which at present are everywhere common, were brought to us from a different part of the world, is, I believe, generally admitted; but respecting their original country, and the time when they were first introduced into Europe, there is much difference of opinion among those who in later times have made researches on that subject[1502]. I shall therefore compare what has been advanced on both sides with what I have remarked myself, and submit my decision to the judgement of the reader.

The question, whether turkeys or turkey-fowls were known to the Greeks and the Romans, will depend upon defining what those fowls were to which they gave the name of meleagrides and gallinæ Africanæ; for in the whole ornithology of the ancients, there are no other kind that can occasion doubt. It has however been justly remarked by Perrault and others, that every thing which we find related by the ancients of the meleagrides can be applied only to the pintado or Guinea fowl (Numida meleagris, Linn.), and not to the turkey; and that the gallinæ Africanæ were only a variety of the former, or a species that approached nearly to them. Their spots, disposed in such a manner as if formed by drops, on account of which, in modern times, they have been called pintados and pientades, and the marks on the feathers of the wings, accord perfectly with the description given of them by Clytus, the scholar of Aristotle[1503]; though in northern countries, some Guinea fowls are found, the colour of which is more mixed with white. But this is a variation not uncommon among birds in general when removed from their native country, as is proved by the white peacocks, which were first observed in Norway. The coloured hood of thick skin which covers the head has also been accurately described by Clytus, as well as the coloured fleshy excrescence on the bill (palearia carunculacea). In size the meleagrides were like our largest common fowls, which is true also of the pintado; and we must acknowledge with Clytus, that its naked head is too small in proportion to the body. The figure of the pintado, like that of the partridge, and its drooping tail, correspond equally well with the epithet gibberæ, especially as the position of its feathers occasions its back to appear elevated or bent upwards. The feet are like those of the domestic fowl, but they are destitute of the spurs with which those of the latter are furnished; and the pintado lays spotted eggs, as described by Aristotle; but these, by the manner in which the fowls are reared in Europe, are liable to variations. It deserves to be remarked above all, that both sexes of the meleagrides are so like, that they can scarcely be distinguished; and this circumstance alone is sufficient to confute those who pretend that the meleagrides were our turkeys. Had that been the case, it is impossible that Clytus in his description, which seems to have been drawn up with great care, should have omitted the proud and ridiculous gestures of the turkey-cock when he struts about with his tail spread out like a fan, or thrown into a circular form, and his wings trailing on the ground, or the long excrescence that hangs down from his bill, and the tuft of black hair on his breast. The unpleasant cry, and the unsocial disposition of the meleagrides, are observed in the Guinea fowls, which, as the ancients justly remarked, frequent rivers and marshes, where turkeys on the other hand never thrive.

The ancients assure us that the native country of the meleagrides was Africa[1504], where the Guinea fowls are still found in a wild state, but where our turkeys were never seen wild. When writers however mention places not in Africa, to which the former were brought, we are not to suppose that they were carried thither directly from Africa. The difference which Columella and Pliny[1505] make between the meleagrides and gallinæ Africanæ is so trifling, as to imply only a variety of the species; and the opinion of Pallas, who has occasionally collected a number of important observations which may serve to explain the natural history of the ancients, is highly probable, that we are to understand under it the Numida mitrata, which he has described. The red crest which the last-mentioned bird always has, and which almost alone distinguishes it from the common Guinea fowl, seems fully to prove this opinion[1506]. I shall here take occasion to remark, that Buffon erroneously affirms that the Guinea fowls, which were transmitted from the Greeks and the Romans, became extinct in Europe in the middle ages; for we find mention made of them in English writers, under the name of Aves Africanæ, Afræ, so early as about the year 1277[1507].

That the ancients were not acquainted with our turkeys is still further confirmed by the testimony of various historians and travellers, who assure us in the first place, that these birds are still wild in America; secondly, that they were brought to us from that country; and thirdly, that before the discovery of the New World they were not known in Europe. Besides, we are enabled, from the information which they give us, to see how and when these animals were conveyed to those countries where they at present are reared as domestic fowls; and these proofs appear to me so strong, that I conclude Barrington asserted the contrary, that he might obtain assent not so much by the force of truth as by advancing absurdities. All animals multiply more easily, and become larger, stronger, and more fruitful in those places which nature has assigned to them for a residence, that is, where they originally lived wild; and this observation seems to hold good in regard to the turkeys in America. It is indeed probable that the number of wild animals will always decrease in proportion as countries are peopled, and as woods are cut down and deserts cultivated; it is probable also, that at last no wild animals will be left, as has been the case with sheep, oxen and horses, which have all long ago been brought into a state of slavery by man. The testimony therefore of those who first visited America, and who found there wild turkeys, deserves the greater attention.

The first author in whom I find mention of them is Oviedo, who wrote about the year 1525[1508]. He has described them minutely with that curiosity and attention which new objects generally excite; and as he was acquainted with no name for these animals, till then unknown to the Europeans, he gave them that which he thought best suited to their figure and shape. He calls them a kind of peacocks, and he relates that even then, on account of their utility, and the excellent taste of their flesh, they were not only reared and domesticated by the Europeans in New Spain, where they were first found, but that they were carried also to New Castille, and to the West India islands. The other fowls likewise which he describes we have without doubt procured from America, such for example as the Crax alector[1509]. Lopez de Gomara, whose book was printed in 1553, makes use of the name gallopavo; and says that the animal resembles in shape the peacock and the domestic cock; and that of all the fowls in New Spain its flesh is the most delicious[1510]. In the year 1584 wild turkeys were found in Virginia[1511]. René de Laudonniere found them on his landing in North America in 1564[1512]. Fernandez also reckons them among the birds of Mexico; and takes notice of the difference between those that were wild and those which had been tamed[1513]. Pedro de Ciesa saw them on the isthmus of Darien[1514], and Dampier in Yucatan[1515]. Besides the testimony of many other later travellers which have been already quoted by Buffon, and which I shall not here repeat, the accounts of Kalm and Smyth in particular deserve to be noticed. The former, who visited Pennsylvania in 1784, says, “The wild turkeys run about here in the woods. Their wildness excepted, they are in nothing different from ours, but in being generally a little larger, and in having redder flesh, which is, however, superior in taste. When any one finds their eggs in the woods, and places them under a tame hen to be hatched, the young, for the most part, become tame also; but when they grow up they make their escape. On this account people cut their wings before they are a year old. These wild turkeys, when tamed, are much more mischievous than those tamed by nature[1516].” Smyth assures us that wild turkeys are so abundant in the uncultivated country behind Virginia, and the southern provinces, that they may be found in flocks of more than five thousand[1517].

These testimonies, in my opinion, are sufficiently strong and numerous to convince any naturalist that America is the native country of these fowls; but their weight will be still increased if we add the accounts given us when and how they were gradually dispersed throughout other countries. Had they been brought from Asia or Africa some centuries ago, they must have been long common in Italy, and would have been carried thence over all Europe. We, however, do not find that they were known in that country before the discovery of America. It is certain that there were none of them there at the time when Peter de Crescentio wrote, that is to say, in the thirteenth century[1518]; else he would not have omitted to mention them where he describes the method of rearing all domestic fowls, and even peacocks and partridges. The earliest account of them in Italy is contained in an ordinance issued by the magistrates of Venice, in 1557, for repressing luxury, and in which those tables at which they were allowed are particularised. About the year 1570 Bartolomeo Scappi, cook to pope Pius V., gave in his book on cookery several receipts for dressing these expensive and much-esteemed fowls[1519]. That they were scarce at this period appears from its being remarked that the first turkeys brought to Bologna were some that had been given as a present to the family of Buonocompagni, from which Gregory XII., who at that time filled the papal chair, was descended.

That these fowls were not known in England in the beginning of the sixteenth century, is very probable; as they are not mentioned in the particular description of a grand entertainment given by archbishop Nevil[1520]; nor in the regulations made by Henry VIII. respecting his household, in which all fowls used in the royal kitchen are named[1521]. They were, however, introduced into that country about the above period; some say in the year 1524; others, in 1530; and some, in 1532[1522]. We know, at any rate, that young turkeys were served up at a great banquet in 1555[1523]; and about 1585 they were commonly reckoned among the number of delicate dishes[1524].

According to the account of some writers, turkeys must have been known much earlier in France; but on strict examination no proofs of this can be found. The earliest period assigned for their introduction into that country is given by Beguillet[1525], who confidently asserts that they were brought to Dijon under the reign of Philip the Bold, about the year 1385. Had this French author quoted his authority, we might have discovered what gave rise to his mistake; but as he has not, one cannot help suspecting that the whole account is a fiction of his own. De la Mare also is in an error when he relates that the first turkeys in France were those which Jaques Cœur, the well-known treasurer to Charles VII., brought with him from the Levant, and kept on his estate in Gatinois, after he had received the king’s permission to return to the kingdom. This Cœur, however, who was banished in 1450, never returned, but died in the island of Chio in the year 1456[1526]. Equally false is the account given by Bouche in his History of Provence, that René, or Renatus, king of Naples and duke of Anjou, first brought turkeys into the kingdom, and reared them in abundance at Rosset[1527]. This author gives as his authority the oral tradition of the neighbourhood, which certainly cannot be put in competition with testimony of a more authentic nature. Another Bouche[1528], who a few years ago wrote also a History of Provence, and who has collected many things that do honour to Renatus, makes no mention of this service, though he could not be ignorant of what had been before related by his namesake. Had these fowls been known so early as the time of that monarch, who died in 1480, it is impossible that they could have been so scarce in France as they really were above a hundred years after. The assertion, often repeated, but never indeed proved, that they were first brought to France by Philip de Chabot, admiral under Francis I., is much more probable. Chabot died in 1543; and what Scaliger says, that in 1540 some turkeys were still remaining in France, may be considered as alluding to the above circumstance. This much however is certain, that Gyllius, who died in 1555, gave soon after the first scientific description of them, which has been inserted both by Gesner and Aldrovandus in their works on ornithology. The same year the first figure of them was published by Bellon. About the same time they were described also by La Bruyere-Champier, who expressly remarks that they had a few years before been brought to France from the Indian islands discovered by the Portuguese and the Spaniards[1529]. How then could Barrington assert that this Frenchman meant the East and not the West Indies? They must, however, have been a long time scarce in France; for, in the year 1566, when Charles IX. passed through Amiens, the magistrates of that place did not disdain to send him, among other presents, twelve turkeys[1530]. This information seems to agree with the account often quoted, that the first turkeys were served up, as a great rarity, at the wedding dinner of that monarch in the year 1570[1531]; but it seems the breed of these fowls was not very common under Charles IX.; for they are not named in the ordinances of 1563 and 1567, in which all other fowls are mentioned. In the year 1603, Henry IV. caused higglers to be punished who carried away turkeys from the country villages without paying for them, under a pretence that they were for the use of the queen[1532]. I shall here also remark, that I can nowhere find that the Jesuits are entitled to the merit of having introduced these fowls into France[1533].

As these American fowls must have been carried to Germany through other lands, we cannot expect to find them in that country at an earlier period. Gesner, who published his Ornithology in 1555, seems not even to have seen them. We are, however, assured by several authors, such as B. Heresbach[1534], Colerus[1535] and others, that turkeys were brought to Germany so early as 1530; and in the same year carried to Bohemia and Silesia[1536]. Respecting the northern countries, I know only, on the authority of Pontoppidan, that they had been in Denmark two hundred years before his time.

As these fowls are found at present both in Asia and Africa, it may be worth while to inquire at what period they were carried thither, especially as these quarters of the world have been by some considered as their native countries. In China there are no other turkeys than those which have been introduced from other parts, as we are expressly assured by Du Halde, though he erroneously adds that they were quite common in the East Indies. They were carried to Persia by the Armenians and other trading people, and to Batavia by the Dutch[1537]. In the time of Chardin they were so scarce in Persia that they were kept in the Emperor’s menagerie[1538]. In the kingdom of Congo, on the Gold Coast, and at Senegal, there are none but those belonging to the European factories. According to Father de Bourzes there are none of them in the kingdom of Madura; and we are told by Dampier that this is the case in the island of Mindanao. Prosper Alpinus also gives the same account in regard to Nubia and Egypt; and Gemelli Carreri says there is none of them in the Philippines; though I agree with Buffon in laying very little stress upon the Travels known under that name, which we have reason to suppose not genuine.

It is worthy of remark, that Cavendish found a great number of turkeys in the island of St. Helena so early as the year 1588; and Barrington misapplies this circumstance to prove that these fowls did not come from America. It is, however, very doubtful whether Cavendish really meant our turkeys, as he says, “Guiney cocks, which we call turkeys[1539];” for the first name belongs to what are at present called pintados; and it is therefore uncertain which kind ought here to be understood. But even allowing that they were turkeys, is it improbable that they should be on an island which had often been visited by the Portuguese? The account of De la Croix is of as little weight; for he says that in the woods of Madagascar there are many coqs d’Inde[1540]. De la Croix published his book in 1688, at which time there were in South America wild horses and wild cattle. Does this, therefore, invalidate the certainty of these animals being carried thither from Europe?

I intended to enter into a critical examination of those grounds upon which Barrington endeavours to prove that turkeys were originally brought from Africa; but on reading over his essay once more, I find the greater part of his arguments are sufficiently refuted by what I have proved from the most authentic testimony; and nothing now remains but to add a few observations. Barrington considers it improbable that these fowls should be so soon spread all over Europe, as Cortez first visited Mexico in 1519, subdued the capital in 1521, and returned to Spain in 1527. To me, however, it does not appear incredible; for I could prove by several instances, that the curiosity excited by the most remarkable American productions soon became general. Those, for example, who take the trouble to inquire into the history of maize or Turkish corn will make the same remark; though it is a truth fully established that we procure that grain from America. How soon did tobacco become common! In the year 1599 the seeds were brought to Portugal; and in the beginning of the seventeenth century it began to be cultivated in the East Indies. When Barrington asserts that these fowls were carried to America by the Europeans, in the same manner as horses and cattle, this argument may be turned against himself; for he must doubtless find it equally improbable that they should so soon become common, numerous and wild, in the New World, as they must have been according to the authorities above quoted.

As many fat turkeys were purchased yearly in Languedoc and sent to Spain in the time of cardinal Perron[1541], it is thence concluded that these fowls were not brought to France through the latter. Perron died in 1620. At that period turkeys were very common; and whoever is acquainted with the industry of the Spaniards will not find it strange that the French should begin earlier to make the rearing of these animals an employment. How falsely should we reason, were we to say that it is impossible the English and French should procure the best wool from Spain, because the Spaniards purchase the best cloth from the French and the English!

One proof by which Barrington endeavours to show that turkeys were esteemed so early as the fifteenth century is very singular. He quotes from Leland’s Itinerary that capons of Grease were served up at an entertainment, under Edward IV., in 1467. The passage alluded to I cannot find; but an author must be very self-sufficient and bold indeed, to convert capons of Grease into capons of Greece, and to pretend that these were turkeys[1542].

What, however, most excites my surprise is, that the name of these fowls even should be assumed by this writer as a ground for his assertion. Had they, says he, been brought from America, they would have been called American or West Indian fowls; as if new objects had names given to them always with reflection. Names are often bestowed upon objects before it is known what they are or whence they are procured. Ray, Minshew[1543], and others have been induced by the name turkey-fowls to consider Turkey as their original country; but whoever is versed in researches of this kind must know that new foreign articles are often called Turkish, Italian, or Spanish. Is Turkey the original country of maize? or is Italy the original country of these birds, because they have been sometimes called Italian fowls? Even allowing that turkeys had acquired their German name (kalekuter) from Calicut, this, at any rate, would prove nothing further than that it was once falsely believed that these animals were brought from Calicut to Europe: but I suspect that the appellation kalekuter, as well as the names truthenne, putjen, and puten, were formed from their cry. Chardin offers a conjecture which is not altogether to be neglected. That traveller thinks that these fowls were at first considered as a species of the domestic fowl, and that they were called Indian, because the largest domestic fowls are produced in that country.

FOOTNOTES

[1502] The principal works in which information may be found on this subject, are Perrault in Mémoires de l’Académie Royale des Sciences depuis 1666 jusqu’à 1699.--Traité de la Police, par De la Mare, ii. p. 726.--Buffon, Hist. Nat.--Pallas, Spicilegia Zoologica, fascic. iv. p. 10.--Pennant, in the Philosophical Transactions, vol. lxxi. part i. p. 72.--Pennant’s Arctic Zoology, vol. ii.--Miscellanies by Daines Barrington. London, 1781, 4to, p. 127.

[1503] Athenæus, Deip. lib. xiv. p. 655. Most of those passages of the ancients in which this fowl is mentioned have been collected by Gesner, in his Histor. Avium, p. 461, and by Aldrovandus in his Ornithologia, lib. xiii. p. 18. When we consider the feathers as delineated by Perrault, we shall find the comparison of Clytus more intelligible than it has appeared to many commentators.

[1504] Plin. Strabo. The following passage of the Periplus Scylacis, p. 122, which I have never found cited in the history of the meleagrides, is worthy of remark. This geographer, speaking of a lake in the Carthaginian marshes, says, “Circa lacum nascitur arundo, cyperus, stœbe et juncus. Ibi meleagrides aves sunt; alibi vero nusquam nisi inde exportatæ.”

[1505] Columella, viii. 2, 2, p. 634.

[1506] I have here quoted nothing more than what I thought requisite to prove that the meleagrides of the ancients were our Guinea fowls, because I had no intention of treating fully on a subject which has been handled by so many others; and because I had only to show that they were not turkeys. Had not this been the case, it would have been necessary for me to collect into one point of view everything that the ancients have said of these fowls, with the words used by the different writers. It may however be said, that by this mode of examining a disputed point, a mode indeed practised by many, the reader may be led to an ill-founded approbation, because what is not agreeable to the author’s assertion may be easily concealed. But this observation is not applicable to me; for I confess that I do not know with certainty whether the Guinea fowls are as careless of their young as the meleagrides are said to have been; whether their cry, which I have often enough heard, and which is indeed unpleasant, agrees with the κακκάζειν of Pollux, v. § 90; and whether the ἀλεκτρυόνες μεγέθει μέγιστοι, mentioned in Ælian’s Hist. Animal, xvi. 2, belong to the Guinea fowls, or, as Pennant will have it, to the Pavones bicalcarati.

[1507] Kennet’s Parochial Antiquities, p. 287. The meleagrides also, which Volateran saw at Rome in 1510, were of the same kind.

[1508] Sommario dell’ Ind. Occid. cap. 3. In the third volume of the Collection of Voyages by Ramusio, Oviedo describes them with great minuteness, which it is unlikely he would have done had these fowls been so well known in Europe as Barrington thinks they were.

[1509] The peacock pheasant of Guiana, Bancroft; Quirissai or Curassao, Brown; the crested curassow, Latham.

[1510] Hist. de Mexico, p. 343.

[1511] Hakluyt, vol. iii. p. 274.

[1512] Pennant quotes also De Bry, but that author I never consulted.

[1513] “Huexolot gallus est Indicus, quem gallipavonem quidam vocant, noruntque omnes.”--Thesaur. Rerum Med. Novæ Hispaniæ, in Append. Barrington remarks that Fernandez would not have said quem norunt omnes, had these animals been first made known from America; for Mexico was discovered in 1519, and Fernandez appears to have written about 1576. This reason, however, appears to me of little weight; especially as it is certain that these fowls, like many other productions which excited universal curiosity, were soon everywhere common. Besides, it is not certain that these words were really written by Fernandez.

[1514] An English translation of Ciesa’s Voyage may be found in Stevens’s New Collection of Voyages and Travels.

[1515] Vol. ii. part ii. p. 65, 85, 114. Leri seems also to have found them in Brazil, see Laet, in his Novus Orbis, Lugd. Bat. 1633, fol. p. 557. As his description, however, is not clear, and as the diligent Marggraf does not mention it among the animals of Brazil, this information appears to be very uncertain.

[1516] Kalm’s Reise, ii. p. 352.

[1517] Tour in the U. S. of America, by J. F. D. Smyth, 1784, 2 vols. 8vo.

[1518] Crescentio lived about the year 1280. [His work Ruralium Commodorum lib. xii. was first printed in 1471.]

[1519] Opera di M. Bartolomeo Scappi, Venet. 1570, 4to. The copy in the library of our university contains eighteen copper-plates, which represent different kitchen utensils, and various operations of cookery. Among the former is a smoke-jack, molinella a fumo. I am inclined to think that turkeys at this period were very little reared by farmers; for I do not find any mention of them in Trattato dell’ Agricoltura, di M. Affrico Clemente, Padovano, in Venetia 1572, 12mo; though the author treats of all other domestic birds.

[1520] It is certain that the name does not occur in the List of archbishop Nevil’s feast, nor is it mentioned in the Earl of Northumberland’s Household-book, so late as the year 1512. See Latham’s Birds.

[1521] This order, which is worthy of notice, may be found in the Archæologia, vol. iii. p. 157.

[1522] Anderson, Hist. Commerce. Hakluyt, ii. p. 165, gives the year 1532; and in Barnaby Googe’s Art of Husbandry, the first edition, printed in 1614, as well as in several German books, the year 1530 is mentioned.

[1523] Dugdale’s Origines Juridiciales, 1671, p. 135.

[1524] Pennant quotes the following rhyme from Tusser’s Five Hundred Points of Husbandry:--

Beefe, mutton and porke, shred pies of the best, Pig, veale, goose and capon and turkie well drest; Cheese, apples and nuts, jolie carols to heare, As then in the countrie, is counted good cheare.

These lines he places in the year 1585, in which the edition he quotes was printed; but as there was an edition in 1557, a question arises whether they are to be found there also. [They are not there.--ED.]

[1525] Déscription du Duché de Bourgogne, par MM. Courtépée et Beguillet, Dijon, 1775, 8vo, vol. i. p. 193, and in Déscription Générale et Particulière de la France, Paris, 1781, fol. In the Description of Burgundy, p. 196, the following passage occurs:--“C’est sous le règne de Philippe le Hardi, que les gelines d’Inde furent apportées d’Artois à Dijon en 1385; ce qui montre la fausseté de la tradition, qui en attribue l’apport à l’Amiral Chabot au seizième siècle. Cent ans avant Chabot, Jaques Cœur en avoit transporté de Turquie en son château de Beaumont en Gatinois, et Americ Vespuce en Portugal.”--What impudence to make such an assertion without any proof!

[1526] See the works which give a particular account of this Jacques Cœur, and which have been quoted by Meusel in Algemeine Welt Historie, xxxvii. p. 615.

[1527] La Chorographie ou Déscription de Provence, par Honoré Bouche, Aix, 1664, 2 vols. fol. ii. p. 479.

[1528] Essai sur l’Histoire de Provence, à Marseille, 1785. 2 vols. 4to.

[1529] De Re Cibaria, lib. xv. cap. 73, p. 632. This work was first published by the author in 1560, but it was written thirty years before. Turkeys, therefore, at any rate, must have been in France in 1630.

[1530] Histoire de la Vie Privée des Français, par Le Grand d’Aussy, i. p. 292.

[1531] Anderson. Keysler’s Travels.

[1532] This is related by Le Grand, from the Journal of L’Etoile.

[1533] “On lit, dans l’Année Littéraire, que Boileau, encore enfant, jouant dans une cour, tomba. Dans sa chute, sa jaquette se retrousse; un dindon lui donne plusieurs coups de bec sur une partie très-délicate. Boileau en fut toute sa vie incommodé; et de-là, peut-être, cette sévérité de mœurs, ... sa satyre contre les femmes..... Peut-être son antipathie contre les dindons occasionna-t-elle l’aversion secrette qu’il eut toujours pour les Jésuites, qui les ont apportés en France.”--Helvetius de l’Esprit. Amst. 1759, 12mo. i. p. 288.

[1534] De Re Rustica. Spiræ Nemet. 1595, 8vo, lib. iv. p. 640.

[1535] Hausbuch, vol. iv. Wittenberg, 1611, 4to, p. 499.

[1536] Œkonomische Nachrichten der Schlesischen Gesellschaft, 1773, p. 306. For the festival of the university of Wittenberg, in 1602, fifteen Indian or Turkey fowls were purchased at the rate of a florin each. They were in part dressed with lemon-sauce.

[1537] Bell’s Travels, i. p. 128.

[1538] “Turkeys (poulets d’Inde) are there foreign and scarce birds. The Armenians, about thirty years ago, carried from Constantinople to Ispahan a great number of them, which they presented to the king as a rarity; but it is said that the Persians, not knowing the method of breeding them, gave in return the care of them to these people, and assigned a different house for each. The Armenians, however, finding them troublesome and expensive, suffered them almost all to perish. I saw some which were reared in the territory of Ispahan, four leagues from the city, by the Armenian peasants; but they were not numerous. Some imagine that these birds were brought from the East Indies; but this is so far from being the case, that there are none of them in that part of the world. They must have come from the West Indies, although they are called cocqs d’Inde because, being larger than common fowls, they in that resemble the Indian fowls, which are of much greater size than the common fowls of other countries.”--Voyages de Chardin, iv. p. 84.

[1539] Hakluyt, ii. p. 825.

[1540] Rélation Universelle d’Afrique. Lyon 1688, iv. p. 426.

[1541] Perroniana, p. 67.

[1542] Leland’s Itinerary. Oxford, 1744, vol. vi. p. 5.

[1543] Minshew’s Guide into Tongues, 1617, fol.

BUTTER

Milk, the most natural and the commonest food of man, is a mixture of three component parts, whey, butter, and cheese. The caseous part is viscous; the butter is the fat, oily, and inflammable part, and properly speaking, is not perfectly dissolved in the serum or whey, but rather only diffused through it like an emulsion, so that it may be separated by rest alone, without any artificial preparation. When milk is in a state of rest, the oily part rises to the surface, and forms what is called cream. When the milk has curdled, which will soon be the case, the caseous parts separate themselves from the whey; and this separation may be effected also by the addition of some mixture, through means of which the produce is liable to many variations. The caseous part, when squeezed and mixed with salt, and sometimes herbs, and when it has been moulded into a certain form and dried, is used under the name of cheese, which will always be better, the greater the butyraceous part is that has been left in it. The cream skimmed, and by proper agitation in a churn or other vessel separated from the whey and caseous parts, becomes our usual butter.

This substance, though commonly used at present in the greater part of Europe, was not known, or known very imperfectly, to the ancients[1544]. The ancient translators of the Hebrew writers[1545] seem however to have thought that they found it mentioned in Scripture[1546]: but those best acquainted with biblical criticism, unanimously agree that the word chamea signifies milk or cream, or sour thick milk, and at any rate does not mean butter[1547]. The word plainly alludes to something liquid, as it appears that chamea was used for washing the feet, that it was drunk, and that it had the power of intoxicating; and we know that mares’-milk, when sour, will produce the like effect. We can imagine streams of milk, but not streams of butter. This error has been occasioned by the seventy interpreters, who translate the Hebrew word by the word boutyron. These translators, who lived two hundred years after Hippocrates, and who resided in Egypt, might, as Michaelis remarks, have been acquainted with butter, or have heard of it; but it is highly probable that they meant cream, and not our usual butter. Those who judge from the common translation, would naturally conclude that the passage in Proverbs, chap. xxx., describes the preparation of butter by shaking or beating; but the original words signify squeezing or pressing, pressio, frictio mulgentis educit lac; so that milking and not making butter is alluded to.

The oldest mention of butter, though it is indeed dubious and obscure, is in the account given of the Scythians by Herodotus[1548]. “These people,” says he, “pour the milk of their mares into wooden vessels, cause it to be violently stirred or shaken by their blind slaves, and separate the part that arises to the surface, as they consider it more valuable and more delicious than that which is collected below it.” The author here certainly speaks of the richest part of the milk being separated from the rest by shaking; and it appears that we have every reason to suppose that he alludes to butter, especially as Hippocrates, who was almost contemporary, mentions the same thing, but in a much clearer manner[1549]. “The Scythians,” says the latter, “pour the milk of their mares into wooden vessels, and shake it violently; this causes it to foam, and the fat part, which is light, rising to the surface, becomes what is called butter. The heavy and thick part, which is below, being kneaded and properly prepared, is, after it has been dried, known by the name of hippace. The whey or serum remains in the middle.” This author, in my opinion, speaks here very distinctly of butter, cheese and whey. It is probable that the Scythians may have hastened the separation of the caseous part from the whey by warming the milk, or by the addition of some substance proper for that purpose. These passages therefore contain the first mention of butter, which occurs several times in Hippocrates, and which he prescribes externally as a medicine[1550]; but he gives it another term (pikerion), which seems to have been in use among the Greeks earlier than the former, and to have been afterwards neglected. That this word signified butter, and was no longer employed in the time of Galen, appears from his translating it, in his explanation of the obsolete expressions of Hippocrates, by the word boutyron[1551]. It was even before that period explained in the same manner by Erotian, in his dictionary of the words used by that Greek physician; and he remarks, from an ancient writer, that the Phrygians called butter pikerion, and that the Greeks seemed to have borrowed the word from these people. It however occurs very seldom, and is to be found neither in Hesychius, Suidas, nor Pollux[1552].

The poet Anaxandrides, who lived soon after Hippocrates, describing the wedding of Iphicrates, who married the daughter of Cotys, king of Thrace, and the Thracian entertainment given on that occasion, says that the Thracians ate butter[1553], which the Greeks at that time considered as a wonderful kind of food.

It is very remarkable that the word butter does not occur in Aristotle, and that he even scarcely alludes to that substance, though we find in his works some very proper information respecting milk and cheese, which seems to imply careful observation. At first he gives milk only two component parts, the watery and the caseous; but he remarks afterwards, for the first time, in a passage where one little expects it, that in milk there is also a fat substance, which under certain circumstances, is like oil[1554].

In Strabo there are three passages that refer to this subject, but from which little information can be obtained. This author says that the Lusitanians used butter instead of oil; he mentions the same circumstance respecting the Ethiopians; and he relates in another place, that elephants, when wounded, drank this substance in order to make the darts fall from their bodies[1555]. I am much astonished, I confess, to find that the ancient Ethiopians were acquainted with butter, though it is confirmed by Ludolfus[1556]. It ought to be remarked also, that according to Aristotle, the elephants, to cure themselves, did not drink butter, but oil[1557]. In this he is followed by Pliny[1558]; and Ælian says, that for the above purpose these animals used either the bloom of the olive-tree, or oil itself[1559]; but Arrian, who lived a hundred years after Strabo, and who has related everything respecting the diseases of the elephant and their cures, in the same order as that author, has omitted this circumstance altogether[1560]. Is the passage of Strabo, therefore, genuine? Ælian however says, in another part of his book, that the Indians anointed the wounds of their elephants with butter[1561].

We are told by Plutarch, that a Spartan lady paid a visit to Berenice, the wife of Dejotarus, and that the one smelled so much of sweet ointment, and the other of butter, that neither of them could endure the other. Was it customary, therefore, at that period, for people to perfume themselves with butter?

Of much more importance are the remarks made by Dioscorides and Galen on this subject. The former says that good butter was prepared from the fattest milk, such as that of sheep or goats, by shaking it in a vessel till the fat was separated. To this butter he ascribes the same effects, when used externally, as those produced by our butter at present. He adds also, and he is the first writer who makes the observation, that fresh butter might be melted and poured over pulse and vegetables instead of oil, and that it might be employed in pastry in the room of other fat substances. A kind of soot likewise was at that time prepared from butter for external applications, which was used in curing inflammation of the eyes and other disorders. For this purpose the butter was put into a lamp, and when consumed, the lamp was again filled till the desired quantity of soot was collected in a vessel placed over it.

Galen, who distinguishes and confirms in a more accurate manner the healing virtues of butter, expressly remarks that cow’s-milk produces the fattest butter; that butter made from sheep’s- or goat’s-milk is less rich; and that ass’s-milk yields the poorest. He expresses his astonishment, therefore, that Dioscorides should say that butter was made from the milk of sheep and goats. He assures us that he had seen it made from cow’s-milk, and that he believes it had thence acquired its name[1562]. “Butter,” says he, “may be very properly employed for ointments; and when leather is besmeared with it, the same purpose is answered as when it is rubbed over with oil. In cold countries, which do not produce oil, butter is used in the baths; and that it is a real fat may be readily perceived by its catching fire when poured over burning coals[1563].” What has been here said is sufficient to show that butter must have been very little known to, or used by, the Greeks and Romans in the time of Galen, that is, at the end of the second century.

The Roman writers who give an account of the ancient Germans, all relate that they lived principally on milk; but they disagree in one thing, because many of them tell us that they used cheese, while others affirm that they were not even acquainted with the method of preparing it[1564]. Pliny, on the other hand, says that they did not make cheese, but butter, which they used as a most pleasant kind of food. He ascribes to them also the invention of it; for it is highly probable that under the expression “barbarous nations” he meant the people of Germany: and his description of butter appears to me so clear, that I do not see how it can be doubted[1565]. He very justly remarks, that, in order to make butter in cold weather, the milk ought to be warmed, but that in summer this precaution is not necessary. The vessel employed for making it seems to have had a great likeness to those used at present; we are told at least that it was covered, and that in the lid there were holes[1566]. What he says however respecting oxygala is attended with difficulties; and I am fully persuaded that his words are corrupted, though I find no variations marked in manuscripts by which this conjecture can be supported. Having made an attempt by transposing the words to discover the real sense, I found that I had placed them in the same order as that in which they had been before arranged by Dithmar, who, in his annotations on Tacitus, quotes them in the same manner as I would read them, and with so much confidence that he does not even hint they were ever read otherwise. Had we both been critics, this similarity might have given our conjecture perhaps more authority; but Dithmar also was a professor of the œconomical sciences[1567].

Oxygala was evidently a kind of cheese, the preparation of which has been best described by Columella[1568]. In order to make it, sweet milk was commonly rendered sour, and the serum was always separated from it. Of this process Pliny speaks likewise; but he first mentions under the above name a kind of cheese formed from the caseous parts which remained behind in the butter-milk, and which when separated from it by acids and boiling, were mixed and prepared in various ways. It must in general have been sourish; for, according to the account of Galen[1569], it affected the teeth, though he mentions also another kind of cheese, under the name of caseus oxygalactium[1570], which was perfectly mild. In the Geoponica[1571] directions are given how this cheese may be kept fresh for a long time. If my reading be adopted, the medicinal effects spoken of by Pliny are not to be ascribed to the butter, but to the sour cheese[1572]; and physicians undoubtedly will be much readier to allow them to the latter than to the former. Whether Tacitus by lac concretum, which he says was the most common food of the Germans, meant cheese or butter I cannot examine, as we have no grounds to enable us to determine this question, respecting which nothing more can be known[1573].

I have now laid before the reader, in chronological order, every thing that I found in the works of the ancients respecting butter; and it is certain, from what has been said, that it is not a Grecian, and much less a Roman invention; but that the Greeks were made acquainted with it by the Scythians, the Thracians and the Phrygians, and the Romans by the people of Germany[1574]. It appears also, that when they had learned the art of making it, they employed it only as an ointment in their baths, and particularly in medicine. Besides the proofs already quoted, a passage of Columella[1575] deserves also to be remarked, because that author, and not Pliny, as Vossius thinks, is the first Latin writer who makes use of the word butyrum. Pliny recommends it mixed with honey to be rubbed over children’s gums in order to ease the pain of teething, and also for ulcers in the mouth[1576]. The Romans in general seem to have used butter for anointing the bodies of their children to render them pliable[1577]; and we are told that the ancient Burgundians besmeared their hair with it[1578]. A passage of Clemens of Alexandria, in which he expressly says that some burned it in their lamps instead of oil, is likewise worthy of attention[1579]. It is however certain, on the other hand, that it was used neither by the Greeks nor the Romans in cookery or the preparation of food, nor was it brought upon their tables by way of dessert, as at a later period was the custom. We never find it mentioned by Galen and others as a food, though they have spoken of it as applicable to other purposes. No notice is taken of it by Apicius; nor is there anything said of it in that respect by the authors who treat on agriculture, though they have given us very particular information concerning milk, cheese and oil. This, as has been remarked by other writers, may be easily accounted for, by the ancients having entirely accustomed themselves to the use of good oil; and in the like manner butter at present is very little employed in Italy, Spain, Portugal, and the southern parts of France, where it is sold in the apothecaries’ shops for medicinal purposes[1580]. It is certain besides, that in warm countries it is difficult to preserve it for any length of time.

To conclude, I shall offer one remark, which, in my opinion is entirely new. It appears to me, by the information which I have here collected from the ancients, that at the period when these authors wrote, people were not acquainted with the art of making butter so clean and so firm as that which we use on our tables. On the contrary, I am fully persuaded that it was rather in an oily state, and almost liquid. They all speak of butter as of something fluid. The moderns cut, knead and spread butter; but the ancients poured it out as one pours out oil. Galen tells us, that, to make soot of butter, the butter must be poured into a lamp. Had the ancients used in their lamps hard or solid butter, as our miners use tallow in the lamps that supply them with light under ground, they would not have made choice of the expression to pour out. We are told that the elephants drank butter; and liquid butter must have been very familiar to the Greek translators of the Sacred Scriptures, when they could mention it as flowing in streams. Hecatæus, quoted by Athenæus, calls the butter with which the Pæonians anointed themselves, oil of milk[1581]. Casaubon observes on this passage, that the author makes use of these words, because butter was then employed instead of oil, and spoken of in the like manner, as was the case with sugar, which was at first considered to be a kind of honey, because it was equally sweet and could be applied to the same purposes. Hippocrates, on the like grounds, calls swine’s seam, swine’s oil[1582]. This explanation I should readily adopt, did not such expressions respecting butter, as one can apply only to fluid bodies, occur everywhere without exception. In warm countries, indeed, butter may be always in a liquid state; but I am of opinion that the ancients in general did not know by means of kneading, washing and salting, to render their butter so firm and clean as we have it at present. On this account it could not be long kept or transported, and the use of it must have been very much limited.

I shall remark in the last place, that butter appears to have been extremely scarce in Norway during the ages of paganism; for we find mention made by historians of a present of butter which was so large that a man could not carry it, and which was considered as a very respectable gift[1583].

FOOTNOTES

[1544] The works with which I am acquainted that treat on this subject, are the following:--M. Schoockii Tractatus de Butyro: accessit ejusdem Diatriba de aversatione Casei. Groningæ, 1664, 12mo.--H. Conring De habitus corporum Germanicorum antiqui et novi caussis. Helmst. 1666, 4to, or Frankf. 1727, 8vo.--Vossii Etymologicon, art. Butyrum.--Traité de la Police, par De la Mare, lib. v. 7. ii. p. 799.--Tob. Waltheri Dissert. de Butyro. Altorfii, 1743.--Conr. Gesneri Libellus de lacte et operibus lactariis, 1543, 8vo. This small treatise I have hitherto sought for in vain.

[1545] Bochart, Hierozoicon, ii. 45, p. 473.

[1546] Genesis, chap. xviii. ver. 8: “And he took butter and milk, and the calf which he had dressed, and set before them.” Deuteron. chap. xxxii. ver. 14: “Butter of kine and milk of sheep.” Judges, chap. v. ver. 25: “He asked water, and she gave him milk; she brought forth butter in a lordly dish.” 2 Samuel, chap. xvii. ver. 29: “And honey, and butter, and sheep.” Job, chap. xx. ver. 17: “He shall not see the rivers, the floods, the brooks of honey and butter.” Ibid. chap. xxix. ver. 6: “When I washed my steps with butter and the rock poured me out rivers of oil.” Proverbs, chap. xxx. ver. 33: “Surely the churning of milk bringeth forth butter.” Isaiah, chap. vii. ver. 15: “Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good.” Ibid. ver. 22: “And it shall come to pass, for the abundance of milk that they shall give, that he shall eat butter; for butter and honey shall every one eat that is left in the land.”

[1547] Michaelis Suppl. ad Lex. Hebr. v. i. p. 807; and his Mosaisches Recht (on the Laws of Moses), § 291 and 295.

[1548] iv. 2. p. 281: “Postquam emulxere lac, in cava vasa lignea diffundunt; et compungentes ad illa vasa cæcos lac agitant (δονέουσι τὸ γάλα) cujus quod summum est, delibatur, pretiosiusque habetur; vilius autem quod subsidit.”--That δονέειν signifies to shake or beat, there can be no doubt. Theocritus uses the same word in speaking of a tree strongly agitated by the wind. It is used also to express the agitation of the sea during a storm; and in Geopon. xx. 46, p. 1270, where the preparation of that sauce called garum is mentioned, it is said that it must be placed in the sun, and frequently shaken.

[1549] De Morbis, lib. iv. edit. 1595, fol. v. p. 67. Also in his treatise De Aëre, Locis, et Aquis, sect. iii. p. 74, he says the Scythians drink mares’-milk, and eat cheese made of it.

[1550] De Natura Mulierum, sect. v. p. 137.--De Morbis Mulier. 2. sect. v. p. 191, 235, and in several other places. Vossius therefore, in his Etymolog. p. 84, says erroneously, that this word was first used by Dioscorides.

[1551] Edition of Basle, 1538, fol. v. p. 715.

[1552] It occurs however in Phavorinus.

[1553] Athenæus, iv. p. 131. Respecting Anaxandrides see Fabricii Bibl. Gr.

[1554] Historia Animal. iii. 20, p. 384: πᾶν δὲ γάλα ἔχει ἰχῶρα ὑδατώτη, ὃ καλεῖται ὀῤῥὸς, καὶ σωματῶδες, ὃ καλεῖται τυρός. Omne lac habet succum aquosum, qui dicitur serum, et alterum corpulentum, qui vocatur caseus.--P. 388: ὑπάρχει δ’ ἐν τῷ γάλακτι λιπαρότης, ἣ καὶ ἐν τοῖς πεπήγοσι γίνεται ἐλαιώδης. Inest in lacte pinguedo, quæ in concreto oleosa fit. This is the translation of Scaliger; but by Gaza the latter part of the passage is translated as follows: “quæ etiam concreto oleum prope trahit.” It appears to me doubtful what ἐν τοῖς πεπήγοσι properly means. The comparison of oil occurs also in Dioscorides and Pliny. Aristotle, in all probability, intended to say that the fat part of milk was observed under an oily appearance in cheese made of sweet milk from which the cream had not been separated; and that indeed is perfectly agreeable to truth.

[1555] Lib. iii. p. 233; xvii. p. 1176; xv. p. 1031.

[1556] Histor. Æthiop. lib. iv. 4, 13.

[1557] Histor. Animal. viii. 31, p. 977.

[1558] Hist. Nat. viii. 10, p. 440.

[1559] Hist. Animal. ii. 18.

[1560] Indica. Amst. 1668, 8vo, p. 537.

[1561] Lib. xiii. cap. 7.

[1562] De Simplic. Med. Facultat. lib. x. p. 151. Edit. Basil. ii. p. 134.

[1563] De Aliment. Facultat. iii. cap. 15, p. 54. Edit. Basil. iv. p. 340.

[1564] Cæsar de Bello Gall. iv. 1. vi. 22. Strabo, lib. iv. speaking of the Britons, says, “In their manners they are somewhat similar to Celts, but more simple and barbarous; so that many, although they abound in milk, are unable to make cheese, through want of skill.”

[1565] Lib. xi. c. 41, p. 637.

[1566] Ib. lib. xxviii. cap. 9, p. 465.

[1567] In my opinion the passage ought to be arranged as follows:--prælirato. Quod est maximum coactum, in summo fluitat. Id exemptum, addito sale, butyrum est, oleosum natura. Quod reliquum est decoquunt in ollis. Additur paululum aquæ (aceti?), ut acescat. Id quod supernatat, oxygala appellant. Quo magis virus resipit, hoc præstantius indicatur. Pluribus compositionibus miscetur inveteratum. Natura ejus adstringere, mollire, replere, purgare.--Dithmar’s emendation may be found in Taciti Libel. de Moribus German. Francof. 1766, 8vo, p. 140.

[1568] Lib. xii. 8, p. 786.

[1569] De Aliment. Facultat. iii. cap. 16, p. 55.

[1570] Ibid. cap. 17, p. 57.

[1571] Lib. xviii. 12, p. 1188.

[1572] See Mercurialis, p. 38.

[1573] De Moribus Germ. cap. 23.

[1574] On this account some conjecture, and not without probability, that the name also βούτυρος or βούτυρον is not originally Greek, but that it may have been introduced into Greece from some foreign country, along with the thing which it expresses. Conring, for example, is of opinion that it is of Scythian extraction. The Grecian and Roman authors, however, make it to be a Greek word, compounded of βοῦς, an ox or cow, and τυρὸς, cheese, as we learn from the passages of Galen and Pliny already quoted. Cheese was known to them much earlier than butter; and it is therefore possible, that at first they may have considered the latter as a kind of cheese, as it appears that τυρὸς once signified any coagulated substance. The first syllable of the word, indeed, one should hardly expect, as the Greeks used the milk of sheep and goats much earlier than cow’s-milk; and for this reason Schook conjectures that the first syllable was added, as usual among the Greeks, to magnify the object, or to express a superior kind of cheese. Varro De Re Rustica, ii. 5, p. 274, says, “Novi majestatem boum, et ab his dici pleraque magna, ut βούσυκον, βούπαιδα, βούλιμον, βοῶπιν; uvam quoque bumammam;” and we find in Hesychius, “βούπαις νέος μέγας· βούπεινα, μέγας λιμὸς· βουφάγος, πολυφάγος.” But this supposes that the Greeks preferred butter to cheese; whereas they always considered the former as of less importance, and less proper for use. The same word being still retained in most languages determines nothing; especially as the Swedes use the word smor, which is totally different, and which was the oldest German name, and that most used in the ninth century; and Lipsius, in an old dictionary of that period, found the word kuosmer butyrum, the first syllable of which is certainly the word kuh, a cow. See Lipsii Epist. ad Belgas, cent. iii. 44, and Wormii Litteratura Runica, cap. 27. These etymological researches, which must always be uncertain, I shall not carry further; but only remark that, according to Hesychius, butter, in Cyprus, where I did not expect it, was called ἔλφος, which word may also be foreign. See Martini Lexic. Philol. art Butyrum, who derives ἔλφος from albus.

[1575] Lib. vi. 12, p. 582.

[1576] Lib. xxviii. cap. 19, p. 486.

[1577] A passage of Tertullian adversus Jud. alludes to this practice. The same words are repeated Adversus Marcion. iii. 13.

[1578] Sidonius Apollinaris, carm. 12.

[1579] Clemens Alexand. Pædag. i. p. 107.

[1580] When Leodius accompanied the elector palatine Frederic II. in his travels through Spain, he was desirous of purchasing in that country several articles necessary for their journey. After much inquiry concerning butter, he was directed to an apothecary’s shop, where the people were much astonished at the largeness of the quantity he asked for, and showed him a little entirely rancid, which was kept in a bladder for external use. H. Th. Leodii Vita et Res Gestæ Frederici Palatini. Francof. 1665, 4to, lib. vi.

[1581] Lib. x. p. 447.

[1582] What Hippocrates calls ἔλαιον ὑὸς Erotian explains by τὸ ὕειον στέαρ.

[1583] Suhm, in the eighth vol. of the Transactions of the Copenhagen Society, where a reference is made, p. 53, respecting the above-mentioned circumstance, to Torfæi Histor. Norveg. pars. i. vi. sect. iii. cap. 2, p. 319.

AURUM FULMINANS

If a solution of chloride of gold be precipitated by an excess of ammonia, a yellow powder will be obtained, which, when heated, or only bruised, explodes suddenly with a prodigious report. The force of this aurum fulminans is terrible, and, in the hands of incautious persons, has often occasioned much mischief. But, however powerful, it cannot, as some have imagined, be employed instead of gunpowder, even were not this impossible on account of the high value of the metal from which it is made; for explosion does not take place when the powder is confined. Phænomena of this kind are always of importance, and afford subject of speculation to the philosopher, though no immediate use can be made of them[1584]. Experiments, however, have rendered it probable that this powder may possess some medicinal virtues, and we are assured that it can be employed in enamel-painting.

He who attempts to trace out the invention of aurum fulminans is like a person bewildered in a morass, in danger every moment of being lost. I allude here to the immense wilderness of the ancient alchemists, or makers of gold; to wade through which, my patience, though pretty much accustomed to such labour, is not sufficiently adequate. Those who know how to appreciate their time will not sacrifice it in endeavouring to discover the meaning of books which the authors themselves did not, in part, understand, or to comprehend passages in which the writer tells us nothing, or, at any rate, nothing of importance. I have, however, made my way through this labyrinth from Spielmann to the works which are ascribed to Basilius Valentin[1585].

The period when this powder was invented is as uncertain as the accounts given of its composition. It is however probable that the discoverer was a German Benedictine monk, who lived about the year 1413[1586]; and there is reason to think that he may have made many useful observations, of which we are yet ignorant. When new observations have been made respecting gold, they have always been found afterwards in the works of Valentin, in a passage which no one before could understand. Such writings are of no more utility than the answers of the ancient oracles, which were comprehended when a knowledge of them was no longer necessary, and which misled those who supposed that they comprehended them sooner. But the account of aurum fulminans in Valentin is so uncommonly intelligible, that it almost seems he either wrote in an explicit manner without perceiving it, or that the words escaped from him contrary to his intention. As the work in which it may be found is scarce, I shall transcribe the prescription[1587]:--

“Take a pound of aqua regia made with sal-ammoniac; that is, take a pound of good strong aquafortis, and dissolve in it four ounces of sal-ammoniac, and you will thus obtain a strong aqua regia, which must be repeatedly distilled and rectified until no more fæsces remain at the bottom, and until it becomes quite clear and transparent. Take fine thin gold-leaf, in the preparation of which antimony has been used; put it into an alembic; pour aqua regis over it; and let as much of the gold as possible be dissolved. After the gold is all dissolved, add to it some oleum tartari, or sal tartari dissolved in a little spring-water, and it will begin to effervesce. When the effervescence has ceased, pour some more oil into it; and do this so often till the dissolved gold falls to the bottom, and until no more precipitate is formed, and the aqua regia remains pure and clear. You must then pour the aqua regia from the gold calx, and wash it well with water eight or ten times. When the gold calx is settled, pour off the water, and dry the calx in the open air when the sun shines, but not over the fire; for as soon as this powder becomes a little heated or warm, it explodes, and does much mischief, as it is so powerful and violent that no man can withstand it. When the powder has been thus prepared, take strong distilled vinegar and pour over it; keep it continually over the fire for twenty-four hours, without stirring it, so that nothing may fall to the bottom, and it will be again deprived of its power of exploding; but take great care that no accident happens by carelessness. Pour off the vinegar, and, having washed the powder, expose it to dry.”

The latter part of the receipt shows that Valentin had made experiments in order to discover how aurum fulminans might be deprived of its power of exploding, and he found that this could be done by vinegar. It appears from his writings that he had discovered also that the same thing could be effected by sulphur[1588].

After the time of Valentin, Crollius, who lived in the last half of the sixteenth century, seems to have been best acquainted with this powder, and to have principally made it known[1589]: at any rate his works are referred to by most of the modern writers. He calls it aurum volatile, and speaks of its being useful in medicine. The name aurum fulminans was, as far as I know, first used by Beguin[1590]. The method of preparing it is described by Kircher, who considers it as a thing uncommon, and who calls it pulvis pyrius aureus[1591].

FOOTNOTES

[1584] [That this and other similar chemical phænomena may be of more advantage than as affording merely subjects for speculation to the philosopher, although not immediately applicable to any useful purpose, may be inferred from the valuable application of fulminating mercury, a somewhat similar compound to that under consideration. This, at first, as with fulminating gold at present, was a mere curiosity; it has recently caused the almost complete substitution of percussion for flint locks in fire-arms, which in addition to the greater certainty caused by the increased rapidity of the discharge, œconomises the quantity of powder requisite.

Fulminating mercury is made by dissolving mercury in nitric acid and pouring the solution into warm alcohol. Effervescence ensues. When this has ceased, the mixture is poured upon a filter, and well-washed with water; after draining, the filter is expanded upon plated copper or stone-ware, heated to 212° by steam or hot water. Dr. Ure recommends that the powder be mixed with a solution of mastic in spirits of turpentine, to cause attachment. Its extensive use in making percussion-caps is well-known. It is however a very dangerous substance to experiment with, owing to the readiness with which it explodes, and has caused many very serious accidents.]

[1585] Spielmann, Institut. Chem. p. 288.

[1586] See Preface of B. N. Petræus to the Works of Valentin, Hamb. 1717, 8vo.

[1587] Fr. Basilii Valentini Letztes Testament; Von G. P. Nenter. Strasb. 1712, 8vo, p. 223.

[1588] See Bergmann on Pulvis fulminans, in his Opuscula Physica et Chemica, 1780, 8vo, ii. p. 133.

[1589] O. Crollii Basilica Chymica. Franc. (1609), 4to, p. 211.

[1590] J. Beguini Tyrocinium Chymicum was printed for the first time at Paris, in 1608, 12mo. In the French translation, Les élémens de chymie, revues, expliquez, etc., par J. L. de Roy; Paris, 1626, 8vo, the receipt for making or fulminant may be found p. 314.

[1591] Kircheri Magnes. Coloniæ, 1643, 4to, p. 548. The author says that he found the receipt for preparing it in Liber insignis de incendio Vesuvii. That I might know whether this work contained anything respecting the history of aurum fulminans, I inquired after it. Kircher undoubtedly meant Incendio del Monte Vesuvio, di Pietro Castelli; in Roma 1632, 4to: but the directions given there, p. 46, for making oro fulminante, are taken from Crollius. Nothing further is to be found in Kircher’s Mundus Subterraneus.