A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins, Volume I (of 2)

506

[This cannot be correct; for Geber, who is supposed to have lived in the eighth century, was acquainted with three kinds of it, and describes the method of preparing burnt alum.]

507

Joh. Serapionis Arabis de simplicibus medicinis opus, cap. 410.

508

Reisebeschreibung, ii. p. 408, 409.

509

This singular appellation occurs in Valentini Historia Simplicium, and several other works.

510

Jul. Cæs. Scaligeri Exot. exercitat. Franc. 1612, 8vo, p. 325.

511

I shall here take occasion to remark, that schist seems to have been employed for making alum in the time of Agricola, as appears by his book De Ortu et Causis Subterraneorum, p. 47.

512

Mercati, Metallotheca, p. 54.

513

Pyrotechnia. Ven. 1559, 4to.

514

Leibnitii Protogæa, p. 47.

515

Bellonii Observationes, cap. lxi.

516

“In Phocis, which lies close to Ionia, there is a mountain abundant in aluminous mineral. The stones found on the top of this mountain are first calcined in the fire, and then reduced to powder by being thrown into water. The water mixed with that powder is put into a kettle; and a little more water being added to it, and the whole having been made to boil, the powder is lixiviated, and the thick part which falls to the bottom in a cake is preserved; what is hard and earthy is thrown away as of no use. The cake is afterwards suffered to dissolve in vessels for four days; at the end of which the alum is found in crystals around their edges, and the bottoms of them also are covered with pieces and fragments of the like nature. The remaining liquor, which at the end of four days does not harden, is poured into a kettle, more water and more powder are added to it, and being boiled as before, it is put into proper vessels, and the alum obtained in this manner is preserved as an article very necessary for dyers. All masters of ships bound from the Levant to Europe, consider alum as a very convenient and useful lading for vessels… In the reign of Michael Palæologus, the first emperor of his family, some Italians requested a lease of that mountain, for which they promised to pay a certain sum annually… The Romans and the Latins built Phocæa Nova on the sea-shore, at the bottom of that mountain which lies on the east side of it. On the west it has the island of Lesbos, on the north the neighbouring bay of Elæa, and on the south it looks towards the Ionian sea.” – Ducæ Historia Byzantina. Venet. 1729, p. 71.

517

The alum of Smyrna is mentioned by Baumé in his Experimental Chemistry, i. p. 458.

518

Some account of other Eastern alum-works is contained in a treatise of F. B. Pegolotti, written in the middle of the fourteenth century, on the state of commerce at that time, and printed in a book entitled Della decima e di varie altre gravezze imposte dal commune di Firenze. Lisbona e Lucca, 1765, 4to, 4 vols. It appears from this work, that in the fourteenth century the Italians were acquainted with no other than Turkish alum.

519

“I shall embrace this opportunity of giving a brief account of the situation of the island, and of the nature of its soil. That Ænaria has been at some time violently separated from the continent by an earthquake, seems proved by a variety of circumstances, such as calcined rocks; the ground full of caverns; and the earth, which, like that of the main land, being abundant in warm springs, and dry, feeds internal fire, and on that account contains a great deal of alum. A few years ago Bartholomew Perdix, a Genoese merchant passing this island in his way to Naples, observed some aluminous rocks scattered here and there along the sea-coast. About a hundred and sixty-three years before that period, the earth having suddenly burst by the effects of fire confined in its bowels, a considerable part of Ænaria was involved in flames. By this eruption a small town was burned and afterwards swallowed up; and large masses of rock mixed with flames, sand and smoke, thrown up where the shore looks towards Cumæ, fell upon the neighbouring fields, and destroyed the most fruitful and the most pleasant part of the island. Some of these huge pieces of rock being at that time still lying on the shore, Bartholomew, by calcining them in a furnace, extracted alum from them, and revived that art which he had brought from Rocca in Syria, where he had traded for several years, and which had been neglected in Italy for many centuries.” – Pontani Hist. Neapol. in Grævii Thesaurus Antiq. Italiæ, ix. part 3. p. 88.

520

“I must not omit to mention that about this time Bartholomew Pernix, a citizen and merchant of Genoa, who had resided long in Syria for the purpose of commerce, returned to his native country. Soon after, he made a voyage to the island of Ænaria, situated in the Tuscan sea, called formerly Pythacusa, and now in the vulgar Greek Iscla or Ischia; and being a man of an acute genius, and a diligent investigator of natural objects, he observed near the sea-coast several rocks fit for making alum. He took some fragments of them therefore, and having calcined them in a furnace, he procured from them most excellent alum. He was the first person who, to the incredible benefit of many, brought as it were again into use that art long abandoned and almost lost in Italy and the greater part of other countries. On that account his name deserves to be rescued from oblivion.” – Genuensis Rerum Annal. auct. P. Bizaro Sentinati. Antv. 1579, fol. p. 302.

521

“About that period (1459) Bartholomew Pernix, a Genoese merchant, sailing past the island of Ænaria or Ischia, learned that there were near the shore many aluminous rocks, that is to say, fit for making alum. He took some of them, therefore, and having caused them to be calcined in a furnace, he procured from them most excellent alum. This Bartholomew brought back to Italy from the city of Rocca, in Syria, where he had traded many years, the art of making alum, which had been neglected and lost for a long space of time.” – Annali della Republica di Genoa, per Agostino Giustiniano. Genoa, 1537, fol. lib. v. p. 214.

522

Dom. Bottone, Pyrologia Topographica. Neapoli, 1692, 4to. This author calls the inventor Perdix, and not Pernix.

523

Fabricii Biblioth. Lat. mediæ et infimæ Ætatis, vol. v. p. 617.

524

“A little before that period came to Rome John di Castro, with whom the Pontiff had been acquainted when he carried on trade at Basle, and was banker to Pope Eugenius. His father, Paul, was a celebrated lawyer of his time, who sat many years in the chair at Padua, and filled all Italy with his decisions; for law-suits were frequently referred to him, and judges paid great respect to his authority, as he was a man of integrity and sound learning. At his death he left considerable riches, and two sons arrived to the age of manhood, the elder of whom, following the profession of the father, acquired a very extensive knowledge of law. The other, who was a man of genius, and who applied more to study, made himself acquainted with grammar and history: but, being fond of travelling, he resided some time at Constantinople, and acquired much wealth by dyeing cloth made in Italy, which was transported thither and committed to his care, on account of the abundance of alum in that neighbourhood. Having by these means an opportunity of seeing daily the manner in which alum was made, and from what stones or earth it was extracted, he soon learned the art. When, by the will of God, that city was taken and plundered about the year 1453, by Mahomet II., emperor of the Turks, he lost his whole property; but, happy to have escaped the fire and sword of these cruel people, he returned to Italy, after the assumption of Pius II., to whom he was related, and from whom he obtained, as an indemnification for his losses, the office of commissary-general over all the revenues of the Apostolic Chamber, both within and without the city. While, in this situation, he was traversing all the hills and mountains, searching the bowels of the earth, leaving no stone or clod unexplored, he at length found some alum-stone in the neighbourhood of Tolfa. Old Tolfa is a town belonging to two brothers, subjects of the Church of Rome, and situated at a small distance from Civita Vecchia. Here there are high mountains, retiring inland from the sea, which abound with wood and water. While Castro was examining these, he observed that the grass had a new appearance. Being struck with wonder, and inquiring into the cause, he found that the mountains of Asia, which enrich the Turkish treasury by their alum, were covered with grass of the like kind. Perceiving several white stones, which seemed to be minerals, he bit some of them, and found that they had a saltish taste. This induced him to make some experiments by calcining them, and he at length obtained alum. He repaired therefore to the Pontiff, and addressing him said, ‘I announce to you a victory over the Turk. He draws yearly from the Christians above three hundred thousand pieces of gold, paid to him for the alum with which we dye wool different colours, because none is found here but a little at the island of Hiscla, formerly called Ænaria, near Puteoli, and in the cave of Vulcan at Lipari, which, being formerly exhausted by the Romans, is now almost destitute of that substance. I have however found seven hills, so abundant in it, that they would be almost sufficient to supply seven worlds. If you will send for workmen, and cause furnaces to be constructed, and the stones to be calcined, you may furnish alum to all Europe; and that gain which the Turk used to acquire by this article, being thrown into your hands, will be to him a double loss. Wood and water are both plenty, and you have in the neighbourhood the port of Civita Vecchia, where vessels bound to the West may be loaded. You can now make war against the Turk: this mineral will supply you with the sinews of war, that is money, and at the same time deprive the Turk of them.’ These words of Castro appeared to the Pontiff the ravings of a madman: he considered them as mere dreams, like the predictions of astrologers; and all the cardinals were of the same opinion. Castro, however, though his proposals were often rejected, did not abandon his project, but applied to his Holiness by various persons, in order that experiments might be made in his presence, on the stones which he had discovered. The Pontiff employed skilful people, who proved that they really contained alum; but lest some deception might have been practised, others were sent to the place where they had been found, who met with abundance of the like kind. Artists who had been employed in the Turkish mines in Asia were brought from Genoa; and these, having closely examined the nature of the place, declared it to be similar to that of the Asiatic mountains which produce alum; and, shedding tears for joy, they kneeled down three times, worshiping God, and praising his kindness in conferring so valuable a gift on our age. The stones were calcined, and produced alum more beautiful than that of Asia, and superior in quality. Some of it was sent to Venice and to Florence, and, being tried, was found to answer beyond expectation. The Genoese first purchased a quantity of it, to the amount of twenty thousand pieces of gold; and Cosmo of Medici for this article laid out afterwards seventy-five thousand. On account of this service, Pius thought Castro worthy of the highest honours and of a statue, which was erected to him in his own country, with this inscription: ‘To John di Castro, the inventor of alum;’ and he received besides a certain share of the profit. Immunities and a share also of the gain were granted to the two brothers, lords of Tolfa, in whose land the aluminous mineral had been found. This accession of wealth to the Church of Rome was made, by the divine blessing, under the pontificate of Pius II.; and if it escape, as it ought, the hands of tyrants, and be prudently managed, it may increase and afford no small assistance to the Roman Pontiffs in supporting the burdens of the Christian religion.” – Pii Secundii Comment. Rer. Memorab. quæ temp. suis contigerunt. Francof. 1614, fol. p. 185.

525

“The Frangipani a third time acquired lands in the kingdom of Naples. When they possessed in Maremma di Roma, Tolfa, Castello, and a jurisdiction which brings at present eighty thousand crowns annually to the Church, it happened that a son of Paul di Castro, a celebrated doctor, and a vassal of these lords, who had been many years a slave in Turkey to an alum-merchant, returned free to his own country; and observing that in the territories of Tolfa there was abundance of alum mineral, he gave notice of it to Lodovico Frangipani, his lord, and was the cause of greatly increasing his revenues. Pope Paul II., however, pretending that the mineral belonged to the Apostolic See, as supreme lord of the fief, and not being able to persuade Lodovico to give it up to the Church, he declared war against him, but was vigorously opposed by Lodovico and his brother Peter, lords of Tolfa, assisted by the Orsini their relations; so that the Pope was obliged to bring about an accommodation with them by means of king Ferrante I., and to pay them as the price of Tolfa sixteen thousand crowns of gold, of which Lodovico gave twelve thousand to the king, and was invested by him in the lordship of Serino in the year 1469.”

526

Ferbers Briefe über Welschland, p. 246.

527

“This year (1460) is distinguished by the discovery of alum at Tolfa vecchia, no one there having been acquainted with it till that period: and this happened by means of one John di Castro, who had acquired some knowledge of it from a young man of Corneto, and a Genoese, who had learned in Turkey the whole process of making it. The said John having observed that in the mountains of Tolfa there were undoubtedly veins of alum, he caused some of the earth and stones to be dug up, and the first experiments were made on them at Viterbo in the following manner. The stones were first calcined in a furnace; a large quantity of water was then thrown over them; and when they were entirely dissolved, the water was boiled in great leaden caldrons; after which it was poured into wooden vessels, where, evaporating by degrees, the result was alum of the most perfect kind. Pope Pius II., sensible of the great benefit which might arise from this mineral to the Apostolic Chamber, employed more than eight hundred persons at Tolfa in preparing it.” – Historia della Città de Viterbo, di Feliciano Bussi. In Roma 1742, fol. p. 262.

528

Museo di Fisica, &c. Ven. 1697, p. 152.

529

Viaggi, vii. p. 234.

530

Anno 1458. “Rock alum, which the Greeks call pharno, was at this time first discovered by a Genoese in the territories of Volterra, where being boiled and found to be good, it began to be dug up afterwards in many of the mountains of Italy. Till that period the Italians had made no use of mines of this kind; for our alum was all brought from Turkey. The above discovery was therefore a great advantage to us.”

531

An account of this dispute between the Florentines and the people of Volterra may be seen in Machiavelli’s History of Florence, book vii.

532

Rap. Volaterrani Comment. Urbani.

533

De Thermis.

534

Viaggi, iii. p. 117.

535

Ibid. vii. p. 51.

536

De Thermis, p. 293. Tozzetti, iv. p. 186.

537

Nicol. Rodrig. Fermosini Tractatus Criminalium. Lugd. 1670, 2 vol. fol. tom. ii. p. 63.

538

Pyrotechn. p. 31. He says expressly that this was the only alum-work in Europe in his time without the boundaries of Italy.

539

History of Commerce, iv. p. 406. “The manufacture of alum,” says he, “was first found out in England, and carried on with success in 1608. It was supported and patronized in the county of York by lord Sheffield, sir John Bourcher, and other landholders of the said county, to the great benefit of England in general, and of the proprietors in particular, to the present day. King James was a great promoter of this alum-work, after he had by the advice of his minister appropriated to himself a monopoly of it, and forbidden the importation of foreign alum.”

540

Such is the account of Pennant in his Tour in Scotland, 1768. “The alum-works in this country are of some antiquity; they were first discovered by sir Thomas Chaloner in the reign of queen Elizabeth, who observing the trees tinged with an unusual colour, made him suspicious of its being owing to some mineral in the neighbourhood. He found out that the strata abounded with an aluminous salt. At that time the English being strangers to the method of managing it, there is a tradition that sir Thomas was obliged to seduce some workmen from the Pope’s alum-works near Rome, then the greatest in Europe. If one may judge from the curse which his Holiness thundered out against sir Thomas and his fugitives, he certainly was not a little enraged; for he cursed by the very form that Ernulphus has left us, and not varied a tittle from that most comprehensive of imprecations. The first pits were near Gisborough, the seat of the Chaloners, who still flourish there notwithstanding his Holiness’s anathema.” The following passage, extracted from Camden’s Britannia, is much to the same purpose: “This (alum) was first discovered a few years since (anno 1607) by the admirable sagacity of that learned naturalist sir Thomas Chaloner, knt. (to whose tuition his majesty (king James the First) committed the delight and glory of Britain, his son prince Henry), by observing that the leaves of trees were of a more weak sort of green here than in other places, &c.”

541

“For some time past the marquis of Lepri has farmed the alum-works at Civita Vecchia for 37,000 scudi. The Apostolical Chamber supplies the necessary wood, which the marquis must be at the expense of cutting down and transporting. About two hundred men are employed in the works; and alum to the amount of from forty-five thousand to fifty thousand scudi is sold annually, particularly to the English and the French.” See Voyage en Italie, par le Baron de R. (Riesch.) Dresden, 1781, 2 vols. 8vo.

542

Voyages Metallurgiques, par M. Jars, vol. iii. p. 297.

543

See Chemical Gazette for July 15, 1843.

544

This author, Blondus or Biondo, describing an Italian village, says, “I shall embrace this opportunity of mentioning a new circumstance, which is, that fowling with that rapacious bird the falcon, a diversion much followed at Arno, by the celebrated Alphonsus king of Arragon, was entirely unknown about two hundred years ago; for though Servius, the grammarian, says that Capua received that name from the augury of a falcon, because the Hetruscans, when founding it, saw one of these birds, which in their language was called capis; yet he does not tell us of what use they were to mankind. Besides, Pliny, who gives the names of many rapacious birds of the hawk kind (‘accipitres scilicet majores et minores achilvones, quos aliqui falcones fuisse volunt’), says nothing of their being employed to catch game; and, without doubt, had fowling in this manner been practised in the time of Virgil, he would have made Æneas and Dido carry such birds along with them when they went out a hunting, whereas he says only,

‘Massylique ruunt equites et odora canum vis.

I will venture therefore to affirm, that two hundred years ago, as I have already said, no nation or people were accustomed to catch either land- or water-fowls with any rapacious bird tamed for that purpose.” I shall here observe, that Biondo must have had a faulty copy of Pliny; for the word achilvones is not to be found in that author, who, nevertheless, mentions the practice of fowling with birds of prey.

545

Valla, the most learned man of the century in which he lived, contradicts Antonius Renaudensis, who says, Nola is a hawk’s bell. “If Nola,” says Valla, “be an old word, it cannot signify that bell now worn by hawks, because the ancients never tamed these birds for catching game, as we do, nor ornamented them with bells. If it be a new word, let him produce the author from whom it is taken.” – Laurentii Vallæ Opera. Basiliæ, 1543, fol. p. 433.

546

In the preface to Scriptores Rei Accipitrariæ.

547

Gyraldi Dialogismi, in Op. Lugd. 1696, fol. ii. p. 870.

548

Those who are desirous of being acquainted with the art of falconry, may consult Pluche, Spectacle de la Nature, vol. i., or the article Fauconnerie, in the French Encyclopédie.

549

See Herodotus.

550

“In that part of Thrace, called formerly Cedropolis, the men go out into the marshes in quest of birds, accompanied by falcons. The men beat the trees and bushes with poles, and put the birds to flight; the hawks fly after them, by which means they are so frightened that they fall to the ground, where the men strike them with their poles and kill them.” – Histor. Animal. lib. ix. c. 6.

551

The Grecian authors above-quoted call the rapacious birds used for pursuing game ἱέρακες; and Pliny calls them accipitres. It would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to distinguish with sufficient accuracy all the species of these birds to which the ancients gave different names. This genus is numerous, and the species often differ so little from each other, that it is not easy to establish their characterizing marks. Besides, they for the most part change their colour, and often their whole appearance, according to their age or the season of the year; so that these characters become very uncertain. It appears that on this account the ancients often divided one species into two or more, and imagined that many species passed one into the other, or that new species were produced by the mixture of different breeds. It seems however certain that the ancients divided those birds of prey which fly abroad in the day-time, into three species: ἀετὸς aquila; γὺπς vultur; and ἱέραξ accipiter. The first and last belong to that genus which Linnæus calls falco, and are the large species of it. The vultures are the Ger-falcons, which are sufficiently distinguished by their bald head and neck.

552

“Respecting Thrace which is situated above Amphipolis, a wonderful thing is related, which might appear incredible to those who had never heard it before. It is said that boys go out into the fields, and pursue birds by the assistance of hawks. When they have found a place convenient for their purpose, they call the hawks by their names, which immediately appear as soon as they hear their voices, and chase the birds into the bushes, where the boys knock them down with sticks and seize them. What is still more wonderful, when these hawks lay hold of any birds, they throw them to the fowlers; but the boys, in return, give them some share of the prey.” – De Mirabilibus Auscultat. cap. 128.

553

Antigoni Carystii Historiæ Mirabiles, cap. 34.

554

“Hawks, which are no less fit for fowling than eagles, and which are not inferior to them in size, are of all birds reckoned to be the tamest and the fondest of man. I have heard that in Thrace they accompany people when they go out in quest of birds in the fens. The fowlers, having spread their nets, remain quiet, while the hawks flying about terrify the birds, and drive them into them. When the Thracians catch any birds, they divide them with the hawks, by which means they render them faithful partners in fowling; if they did not give them a share of the booty, they would be deprived of their assistance.” – Histor. Anim. lib. ii. cap. 42.