[540] Such is the account of Pennant in his Tour in Scotland, 1768. “The alum-works in this country are of some antiquity; they were first discovered by sir Thomas Chaloner in the reign of queen Elizabeth, who observing the trees tinged with an unusual colour, made him suspicious of its being owing to some mineral in the neighbourhood. He found out that the strata abounded with an aluminous salt. At that time the English being strangers to the method of managing it, there is a tradition that sir Thomas was obliged to seduce some workmen from the Pope’s alum-works near Rome, then the greatest in Europe. If one may judge from the curse which his Holiness thundered out against sir Thomas and his fugitives, he certainly was not a little enraged; for he cursed by the very form that Ernulphus has left us, and not varied a tittle from that most comprehensive of imprecations. The first pits were near Gisborough, the seat of the Chaloners, who still flourish there notwithstanding his Holiness’s anathema.” The following passage, extracted from Camden’s Britannia, is much to the same purpose: “This (alum) was first discovered a few years since (anno 1607) by the admirable sagacity of that learned naturalist sir Thomas Chaloner, knt. (to whose tuition his majesty (king James the First) committed the delight and glory of Britain, his son prince Henry), by observing that the leaves of trees were of a more weak sort of green here than in other places, &c.” [541] “For some time past the marquis of Lepri has farmed the alum-works at Civita Vecchia for 37,000 scudi. The Apostolical Chamber supplies the necessary wood, which the marquis must be at the expense of cutting down and transporting. About two hundred men are employed in the works; and alum to the amount of from forty-five thousand to fifty thousand scudi is sold annually, particularly to the English and the French.” See Voyage en Italie, par le Baron de R. (Riesch.) Dresden, 1781, 2 vols. 8vo. [542] Voyages Metallurgiques, par M. Jars, vol. iii. p. 297. [543] See Chemical Gazette for July 15, 1843. FALCONRY.