THE SEVEN SACRED METALS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 99, 20 March 1875, Page 9

THE SEVEN SACRED METALS.

In the discovery of the metals men first asserted their mastery over Nature j yet the discovery is still progressing. Before the fifteenth century only seven were positively known. They were each held sacred, among the ancients, to some ruling deity. Gold — indestructable, malleable, the richest in coloring, the most precious of decorations — was consecrated to Jupiter, or the sun, and had already assumed the supremacy which it has never lost. It was coined into the heavy darics of Persia and the aureus of Imperial Rome. It was used to gild temples and statues, was wrought into rich jewellery, and woven into delicate threads .that enlivened the flowered stuffs of Babylon. Gold mines and gold-bearing streams were found in Arabia, Syria, Greece, Italy and Spain, and the pursuit of the precious metal was carried on with various success by countless throngs of miners. The richest mines, at least in later ages, were those in Spain ; and the enormous productiveness of the Spanish soil was slowly exhausted by the successive labors of the Carthaginians and the Romans. So successful was their industry, that but little gold or silver can now be found in a territory where the precious metal once lay scattered in 'boundless profusion on the surface of the earth. Silver ranked next to gold, and was named from the soft light of the moon. The richest silver mines were those of Spain. It was wrought into cups, vases, lamps ; adorned the helmets and shields of warriors ; and formed the costly mirrors with which tho Roman ladies shocked the austerity of Lactantius or Jerome. The beautiful silver coins of the Greek and Roman cities fill modern collections. Five other metals — iron, copper, mercury, lead, and tin — were employed by the ancients for various purposes ; they made steel by a rude process, and brass without discovering zinc_ For many ages no addition was made to the sacred seven" Three thousand years passed away before it was suspected that the number could be"increased — a memorable example of the slowness of human apprehension. At length, in 1490, antimony was added to the metallic family ; and not far off from the period of the discovery of a new world, the chemists were about to enter upon fresh fields of science, scarcely less boundless or inviting. A second metal, bismuth, came in almost with the Reformation. Zinc, perhaps the most important of the new family, may have preceded the others ! it was certainly described long before. It is, indeed, quite curious to notice how the bright metal has been constantly forcing itself upon the attention of careful observers, and had yet been wholly overlooked, had been used by the ancients, in the form of an earth, to color copper into brass, and give it a shining surface like gold, was seen dropping from the furnaces of the Middle Ages, or melted in rich flakes from their walls. Two Magicians, or philosophers, at last detected the error of ages ! and Albertus Magnus and Paracelsus probably both discovered that zinc was as indestructible and as free from foreign substances as gold. It seemed a pure element. Paracelsus, who was fond of penetrating to the source of things, admits that he could not tell how the bright metal grew ; nor in the height of their magic renown was it ever foreseen that the rare substance the sorcerers had discovered would one day shed knowledge, in tongues of fire, from. London to Japan. Two centuries followed, during which no metallic substance was discovered. Paracelsus found no successor ; Alberfcus, almost the first man of science in Europe, was remembered only as a sorcerer. It was not until 1733 that the vast field of metallic discovery began to open upon man. Two valuable and well-known metals — platinum and nickel — among several others, first appeared about the middle of the 18th century. The number of the metals now rapidly enlarged ; galvanism lent its aid to dissolve the hardest earths j and at length, in the opening of the 19th century, a cluster of brilliant discoveries aroused the curiosity of science. Each eminent philosopher seemed to produce new metals. Berzelsius discovered three ; Davy, the Paracelsus of his age, is the scientific parent of five — potassium, sodium, barium, strontium, calcium. The numbers advanced, until already more than 50 metals, of various importance, have been given to the arts. The new experiments in light have added caesium and rubidium ; and no limit can now be fixed for the metallic family, which for so many ages embrace only seven members, the emblems of the ruling gods. — ' Once a Week.'