The earliest smiths[863] in Greece wrought not in iron but in brass, of which, at first, both arms and domestic implements were fashioned. In Mexico and Peru, where, likewise, copper[864] was known before iron, they possessed the art of hardening it to so great a degree, that it would even cut stones and the closest-grained wood. The same or a similar process was known to the ancients, and might still, perhaps, be easily recovered were it any longer an object to be desired. The Greeks always retained a strong partiality for articles of brass, copper, and bronze, and besides statues,[865] pillars,[866] and trees, where the fruit was sometimes of gold,[867] employed them in cups, urns, vases, and caldrons, with covers of the same metal.[868] We also find mention made of brazen mangers, and even maps.[869] ----- Footnote 863: Cf. Il. ξ. 48. Magii, Var. Lect. p. 130. 1. Footnote 864: The hardness, however, would appear to have been produced partly by the interfusion of different metals, partly by the liquid in which the implements were quenched. Ulloa, Mémoires Philosophiques, &c., t. ii. p. 90. 94. Observations, p. 468. Cf. Voyages, t. i. p. 384. Footnote 865: Plut. Philop. § 8. Footnote 866: Thucyd. v. 47. Footnote 867: It is related of the bronze palm-tree at Delphi with fruit of gold, that the dates were imitated so exactly, that they were pecked at and destroyed by the crows: Ἐν δὲ Δελφοῖς Παλλάδιον ἕστηκε χρυσοῦν, ἐπὶ φοίνικος χαλκοῦ βεβηκὸς, ἀνάθημα τῆς πόλεως ἀπὸ τῶν Μηδικῶν ἀριστείων. Τοῦτ᾽ ἔκοπτον ἐφ’ ἡμέρας πολλὰς προσπετόμενοι κόρακες, καὶ τὸν καρπὸν ὄντα χρυσοῦν τοῦ φοίνικος ἀπέτρωγον καὶ κατέβαλλον. Plut. Nic. § 8. Footnote 868: Herod. i. 48. iv. 81. 70. The extraordinary forms sometimes assumed by these vases are in part mentioned by Pollux, who, in describing the προσωποῦττα says, it was a vessel expanding above into the mouth of an ox, or the jaws of a lion. Onomast. ii. 48. In the Royal Prussian Museum there is found a vase, the mouth of which represents that of a griffin. Racolta de’ Monumenti più Interressanti del Real Museo Borbonico, e di varie Collezioni private, Publicati da Raffaele Gargiulo, Napoli, 1825, No. 113. See in the same collection a variety of other vases representing the faces of Hermes, the heads of dragons, hippogriffs, wild boars, &c. No. 75, sqq. Footnote 869: Herod. ix. 70. v. 49. ----- With tin, also, the Greeks, even in the Homeric age, were acquainted;[870] and, among other uses which they, in later ages, made of it, was that of lining the inside of their cooking utensils.[871] ----- Footnote 870: Il. σ. 565. φ. 592. ψ. 561. Footnote 871: Beckmann, History of Inventions, iv. 13. -----