The ashes which pass through the sieve are of the same use as they were
at first, for, indeed, from these and pulverised bones they make the cupels.
Finally, when much of it has accumulated, the yellow pompholyx adhering to
the walls of the furnace, and likewise to those rings of the dome near the
apertures, is cleared away.
I must also describe the crane with which the dome is raised. When
it is made, there is first set up a rectangular upright post twelve feet
long, each side of which measures a foot in width. Its lower pinion turns
in a bronze socket set in an oak sill; there are two sills placed crosswise so
It is obvious from the context that he means saturated furnace bottoms—the herdpley of the old
German metallurgists—and, in fact, he himself gives this equivalent in the Interpretatio, and
describes it in great detail in De Natura Fossilium (p. 353). The derivatives coined one time
and another from the Greek molybdos for lead, and their applications, have resulted in a
stream of wasted ink, to which we also must contribute. Agricola chose the word molybdaena
in the sense here used from his interpretation of Pliny. The statements in Pliny are a hopeless
confusion of molybdaena and galena. He says (xxxin, 35) : " There are three varieties of
" it (litharge)—the best-known is chrysitis; the second best is called argyritis; and
" a third kind is called molybditis......Molybditis is the result of the smelting of
" lead. . . . Some people make two kinds of litharge, which they call scirerytis and
" peumene ; and a third variety being molybdaena, will be mentioned with lead." (xxxiv,
53): " Molybdaena, which in another place I have called galena, is an ore of mixed silver
