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Buffon (‘Hist. Nat.’ article ‘Cuivre’) believed in the ‘lost art.’ Rossignol[163] (pp. 237–242) has treated of the trempe (διά τινος βαφῆς) que les anciens donnèrent au cuivre; and relates that the chemist Geoffrey, employed by the Comte de Caylus, succeeded in hardening copper and in giving it the finest edge; but the secret was not divulged. Mongez, the Academician, held that copper was indurated by immersion and by gradual air-cooling, but that la trempe would soften it.[164] In 1862 David Wilson, following Proclus and Tzetzes, declares the process of hardening and tempering copper so as to give it the edge of iron or steel, a ‘lost art.’ Markham[165] supposes that the old Peruvians hardened their copper with tin or silica; and he erroneously believes that tin is scarcely found in that section of South America.

Modern archæological discovery has suggested that in many parts of the world we must intercalate an age of virgin Copper between the so-called Stone and Bronze Periods. The first metal, as far as we know, was the stream-gold, washed by the Egyptians; and, as Champollion proved, the hieroglyphic sign for Núb (gold) is a bowl with a straining-cloth dripping water.[166] The fable of glass-discovery by the Sidonians on the sands of the Belus,[167] a tale which has le charme des origines, explains, I have said, how a bit of metalliferous stone, accidentally thrown upon the fire in a savage hut, would suggest one of the most progressive of the arts. And soon the ‘featherless biped,’ like the Mulciber and the Mammon of Milton—