Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/250

238 the hands of real artists. It then furnished the material for those wonderful pieces of goldsmith's work that were saved by the low price of the metal from the melting-pot which works of gold and silver could not escape, and which have come down to us as precious specimens of middle-age art. The pewterers of England, Flanders, and Spain, particularly of Barcelona, then produced works of real taste. The most remarkable art-works which remain to us from that epoch were produced in France and Germany, especially in Nuremberg, whose pots and plates of tin were as famous as its dolls. Tin thus had then all the honors of the precious metals. It still shares with the precious metals the advantage of cleanliness, which is set forth by many authors, who recommend it for the preservation of medicines that would be changed by contact with any other metal.

The importance of the question of the source whence tin was derived at such a remote age was indicated by M. Daubrey, when he said, in the French Academy of Sciences, that this metal presented a double interest: "On one side, its use in the form of bronze characterized a