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Lapis Lydius, Touchstone, Assaying

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LAPIS LYDIUS.
155
(containing copper), of the second quality ; but if black (betraying the presenco of lead), it was pronounced base. Pliny exposes an ingenious fraud of the silversmiths intended to baffle this test. They kept the chafing-dish beforehand steeped in urine, the salts of which, when the iron was heated, fixed upon the filings assayed, and, whitening them for a time, so enabled the piece to pass muster for fine standard. Another and more ready test was to breathe upon the polished surface, the more quickly the breath dispersed, the better the quality of the plate. As the silver coin even in Pliny's age was falling rapidly in its standard, we may suspect that the plate also was of a quality more or less debased, according to the honesty of the silversmith.
It is a curious fact that the Chinese Tutenague or " white copper " (of late years so largely manufactured here with the name of German silver) had already, under the Ptole­mies, found its way to Europe as a substitute for the precious metal. Crinagoras sends to a friend for a birth­day present, " a copper flaggon (olpe) exactly resembling silver, an Indian work," together with a neat epigram. (Anth. vi. 261.)
The famed " Corinthian Brass " may be classed indif­ferently amongst the ancient alloys of gold or of silver. Pliny describes three qualities of this composite metal, which was an alloy of gold, silver, and copper. In fact, it was much the same as what our jewellers dignify with the name of gold, and employ for all articles not Hall-marked for 18 carats fine. The first quality was yellow-coloured, in which the gold preponderated ; the second resembled silver, that metal constituting the greater quantum of its mass ; the third contained all three in equal proportions. Such alloys would all now pass for gold, and indeed the first is better than our 12-carat gold, and the third equal
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