Amongst the moderns _æs_ gave rise to _airain_. The French _leton_, _laton_, _latton_, or _laiton_ (_cuivre jaune_); the Italian _lattone_, _lottone_, and lastly _ottone_, and the Spanish _lata_ and _laton_, German _Latun_, and English _latten_ (thin sheet brass), the _latoun_ of Chaucer (‘Pardoner’s Prologue,’ 64), are either from _luteum_, yellow (metal), or from the plant _luteum_ (_Reseda luteola_), used to stain chrysocolla.[290] Our _brass_ is probably the Scandinavian _bras_, cement; and the German _Mosch_, _Meish_, and _Messing_, from _mischen_ = _miscere_.[291] [Heading: _ORICHALCUM._] It may be advisable to notice the ὀρειχάλκον[292] of the Homerids and Hesiod, which Strabo also calls ψευδάργυρος (false silver), and _aurichalcum_, and which the perverse ingenuity of commentaries has made so mysterious.[293] In the poetic phase, which loves the vague, this ‘mountain-copper’ was a mythic natural metal, ranking between gold and silver, and chimerical as was the _chalcolibanon_[294] of the Apocalypse (i. 15, ii. 18). The name does not occur in Pindar or the Dramatists. Plato (the ‘Critias,’ § ix., treating of Atlantis,[295] America) makes _oreichalc_, ‘now known only by name,’ the most precious metal after gold. Pliny (xxxiv. 2) tells us truly enough that _aurichalcum_ no longer exists. The next application of the word was to ruby copper (?), a suboxide whose beautiful crystals are formed in the natural state. Pollux and Hesychius the grammarian (D.D. 380) define it as copper (χαλκός) resembling gold; and Cicero puts the question whether, if a person should offer a piece of gold for sale, thinking he was disposing of only a piece of orichalcum, an honest man ought to inform him that it was really gold, or might fairly buy for a penny what is _worth a thousand times as much_.[296] Buffon compares it with tombac, or Chinese copper containing gold.[297] Beckmann (_s. v._ ‘Tin’) notes _aurichalcum_ or Corinthian brass in Plautus, ‘Auro contra carum.’ Festus speaks of ‘orichalcum (copper), stannum (zinc or pewter?), cassiterum (tin), and aurichalcum (brass).’ The same signification occurs in Ambrose, Bishop of Milan (fourth century); in Primasius, Bishop of African Adrumetum (sixth century), and in Isidore, Bishop of Seville (seventh century). Albertus Magnus (thirteenth century), the Dominican monk, in treating ‘De Natura et Commixtione Æris,’ describes how _cuprum_ became _aurichalcum_.