Its valuable Qualities—English Copper Mines—Their comparatively recent Importance—Dreary Aspect of the Cornwall Copper Country—Botallack—Submarine Copper Mines—A Blind Miner—Swansea—Smelting Process—The Mines of Fahlun—their Ancient Records—Alten Fjord—Drontheim— The Mines of Röraas—The Mines of Mansfeldt—Lake Superior—Mysterious Discoveries—Burra Burra—Remarkable Instances of Good Fortune in Copper Mining 315 CHAPTER XXVII. TIN. Tin known from the most remote antiquity—Phœnician Traders—The Cassiterides—Diodorus Siculus—His account of the Cornish Tin Trade—The Age of Bronze—Valuable Qualities of Tin—Tin Countries—Cornish Tin Lodes—Tin Streams—Wheal Vor—A Subterranean Blacksmith—Huel Wherry, a Tin Mine under the Sea—Carclaze Tin Mine—Dressing of Tin Ores—Smelting—The Cornish Miner 332 CHAPTER XXVIII. IRON. Iron the most valuable of Metals—Its wide Diffusion over the Earth—Meteoric Iron—Iron very anciently known— Extension of its Uses in Modern Times—British Iron Production—Causes of its Rise—Hot Blast—Puddling—Coal Smelting—The Cleveland District—Rapid Rise of Middlesborough—British Iron Ores—Production of Foreign Countries—The Magnetic Mountain in Russia—The Eisenerz Mountain in Styria—Dannemora—Elba—The United States—The Pilot Knob—The Cerro del Mercado 345 CHAPTER XXIX. LEAD. Its Properties and extensive Uses—Alston Moor—Belgian Lead Mines—Galena in America—Extraction of Silver from Lead Ores—Pattinson’s Process—A great part of our wealth is due to the laboratory 364 CHAPTER XXX. MERCURY. Not considered as a true Metal by the Ancients—Its Properties and Uses—Almaden—Formerly worked by Convicts— Diseases of the Miners—Idria—Its Discovery—Conflagration of the Mine—Its Produce—Huancavelica—New Almaden 370 CHAPTER XXXI. THE NEW METALS. Zinc—The Ores, but not the Metal, known to the Ancients— Rapid increase of its Production—Chief Zinc-producing Countries—Platinum—Antimony—Bismuth—Cobalt and Nickel— Wolfram—Arsenic—Chrome—Manganese—Cadmium—Titanium— Molybdenum—Aluminium—Aluminium Bronze—Magnesium—Sodium— Palladium—Rhodium—Thallium 380 CHAPTER XXXII. COAL.