The ancients seem to have been ignorant of the method of tinning iron. At least, no reference to _tin plate_ is made by Pliny, or by any other ancient author, that I have had an opportunity of consulting. It would appear from Pliny, that both copper and brass were tinned by the Gauls at an early period. Tinned brass was called _æra coctilia_, and was so beautiful that it almost passed for silver. _Plating_ (or covering the metal with plates of silver), was gradually substituted for tinning; and finally _gilding_ took the place of plating. The trappings of horses, chariots, &c., were thus ornamented. Pliny nowhere gives a description of the process of plating; but there can be little doubt that it was similar to that at present practised. Gilding was accomplished by laying an amalgam of gold on the copper or brass, as at present. 7. Lead appears also to have been in common use among the Egyptians, at the time of Moses.[59] It was distinguished among the Romans by the name of _plumbum nigrum_. In Pliny’s time the lead-mines existed chiefly in Spain and Britain. In Britain lead was so abundant, that it was prohibited to extract above a certain quantity in a year. The mines lay on the surface of the earth. Derbyshire was the county in which lead ores were chiefly wrought by the Romans. The rich mines in the north of England seem to have been unknown to them. [59] Numbers xxxi. 22. Pliny was of opinion that if a lead-mine, after being exhausted, be shut up for some time, the ore will be again renewed. In the time of Pliny leaden pipes were commonly used for conveying water. The vulgar notion that the ancients did not know that water will always rise in pipes as high as the source from which it proceeds, and that it was this ignorance which led to the formation of aqueducts, is quite unfounded. Nobody can read Pliny without seeing that this important fact was well known in his time. Sheet lead was also used in the time of Pliny, and applied to the same purposes as at present. But lead was much higher priced among the ancients than it is at present. Pliny informs us that its price was to that of tin as 7 to 10. Hence it must have sold at the rate of 6_s._ 0¼_d._ per pound. The present price of lead does not much exceed three halfpence the pound. It is therefore only 1-48th part of the price which it bore in the time of Pliny. This difference must be chiefly owing to the improvements made by the moderns in working the mines and smelting the ores of lead. Tin, in Pliny’s time, was used as a solder for lead. For this purpose it is well adapted, as it is so much easier smelted than lead. But when he says that lead is used also as a solder for tin, his meaning is not so clear. Probably he means an alloy of lead and tin, which, fusing at a lower point than tin, may be used to solder that metal. The addition of some bismuth reduces the fusing point materially; but that metal was unknown to the ancients.