Tin, like copper, from its softness, is unfitted for cutting purposes, and therefore does not mark an era in the civilisation of the world. It was used in the Bronze age unalloyed, merely for purposes of ornament, and for inlaying pottery, such as that discovered in the pile-dwellings of the lake of Bourget.[1]
Tin in Scandinavia, Germany, and Britain.
In our enquiry into the origin of the Bronze civilisation, it is unnecessary to notice the tin districts of Sweden and Finland, which have only been worked in modern times.
In Germany tin has been worked from time im-
- ↑ Chantre, L'Age du Bronze.
the height of some two feet; so that, externally, the apparatus was not unlike a large chair built solid to the seat, enclosing a chimney-pot extending from the middle of it nearly to the floor-level. A blast was employed, produced by an old pair of weezy blacksmith's bellows, apparently of English make, placed behind the screen of masonry, the tuyère being inserted about four inches above the bottom. The tap-hole, which was on the opposite side, was kept constantly open.
"In order to carry on the operation of smelting, the ore which had been collected by the smaller children, and had subsequently been broken and roughly picked over by a bigger brother, was finally charged into the furnace, alternately with handfuls of fuel, by the mother, while the father blew the bellows. Charcoal made from the roots of a species of heath, locally plentiful, was employed as fuel, no flux of any kind was used, and the metal and slag issuing from the open tap-hole were received in a fragment of a broken cast-iron pot, A very small quantity only of slag was produced, which, falling from time to time into the broken pot with the metal, was, as it set, removed with an iron crook.
"When a sufficient quantity of tin had accumulated in the broken pot, it was cast into strips in a sandstone mould.
"The quantity produced did not exceed a few pounds per hour, and I was informed that after being cast into strips it was usually sold to travelling tinkers for the purpose of tinning copper vessels."
