The natural history of the Bible ; or, A description of all the quadrupeds, birds, fishes, reptiles, and insects, trees, plants, flowers, gums, and precious stones, mentioned in the sacred scriptures: Collected from the best authorities, and alphabetically arranged / by Thaddeus Mason Harris.

  • Thaddeus Mason Harris
Date:
1824
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The natural history of the Bible ; or, A description of all the quadrupeds, birds, fishes, reptiles, and insects, trees, plants, flowers, gums, and precious stones, mentioned in the sacred scriptures: Collected from the best authorities, and alphabetically arranged / by Thaddeus Mason Harris. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    95/474 page 55
    NETEST, we may derive it from the verb wn} NETEs, which signifies, * to dig up;” the very meaning of fossil, which comes from the Latin word fodio, * to dig. So the Hebrew must either mean minerals in general, or at least a native and not a factitious mineral. T ; | | The word brass occurs very often in our translation of the Bible; but that is a mixed metal, for the making of which we are indebted to the German metallurgists of the thirteenth century. That the ancients knew not the art of making it is almost certain. None of their writings even hint at the process. There can be no doubt that copper is the original metal in- tended. ‘This is spoken of as known prior to the flood; and to have been discovered, or at least wrought, as was also iron, in the seventh generation from Adam, by Tubalcain ; whence the name Vulcan**, ‘The knowledge of these two metals must have been carried over the world afterwards, with the spreading colo- nies of the Noachide. An acquaintance with the one and the other was absolutely necessary to the existence of the colonists; the clearing away of the woods about their settlements, and the erection of houses for their habitation. Agreeably to this, the ancient histories of the Greeks and Romans speak of Cadmus as the inventor of the mineral which by the former is called nednos, and by the latter es; and from him had the denomination cadmea. According to others, Cadmus discovered a mine, of which he taught the use. ‘The person here spoken of was undoubtedly the same with Ham, or Cam, the son of Noah, who probably learned the art of assaying metals from the family of ‘Tubalcain, and communicated that knowledge to the people of the colony which he settled *9. | All the Greek writers, even to Hesiod, speak of saAxoc, by which I am convinced a simple, and not a compound metal is intended: whence came the Latin word calz, the heel, and calco, to tread upon; as much as to say, something under feet, beneath the surface of the earth. ‘The Romans gave, as I observed before, the name es to the same substance, and we have translated it ** brass*9, though it is as likely to have been copper. Indeed Castel says, it was the same with what was afterwards called cu- prum*, Pliny is the first who uses the term cupreus; and since 44 See this formation of the name in Bryant's Mythology, and hence, by a . transposition of the vowels, the name of the idol mentioned, Amos, v. 26, jv3 5y3 BAL-CHIUN, 45 From the mixture of copper and. cadmean earth, [a kind of lapis calami- naris] was made the aurichalcum. . * Cadmia terra, quie in @s conjicitur ut fiat aurichalcum. Frsrus. 5$ Lexic. Med. “’ Cuprum. Nondum prolatus auctor antiquior Spartiano Caracalla, Gesner, Thesaur. Liug. Lat.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3