[831] I shall refer those desirous of being acquainted with the
nature of this labour, to Gatterer’s Anleitung den Harz zu bereisen.
Göttingen, 1785, 8vo. i. p. 101. [Figures of the stamping-works may be
seen in Ure’s Dictionary of Arts and Manufactures, pp. 818 and 1119.]
[832] Diodor. iii. 13, p. 182.
[833] Photii Bibl. p. 1342.
[834] Hippocrates de Victus Rat. lib. i. sect. 4.
[835] Plin. xxxiii. 4, sect. 21.
[836] Gensane Traité de la Fonte des Mines. Par. 1770, i. p. 14.
[837] Von d. goldgrabenden Ameisen u. Greiffen der Alten. Helmst.
1799. This dissertation may be found also in a valuable collection of
different pieces by the same author, printed at Helmstadt, 1800.
[838] See François Garrault, Des Mines d’Argent trouvées en France,
Paris 1579, where mention is made only of mortars, mills and sieves.
This Garrault is the first French writer on mining. His work, which
is scarce, was printed by Gobet in the first part of the Anciens
Minéralogistes de France, Paris 1779, 8vo.
[839] At the Nertschinsk works in Siberia, the machinery must be still
driven by men or cattle, because all the dams and sluices are destroyed
by the frost, and the water converted into ice. Some of the works there
however have machinery driven by water during the few summer months.
[840] _Sachs_ or _sæx_ in old times denoted a cutting or stabbing
instrument, such for example as _schaar-sachs_, a razor;
_schreib-sachs_, a penknife. See Fritsch’s Wörterbuch, who derives
_sachs_ from _secare_. May not the word σάλαξ, which in Pollux
means the sieve used at smelting-works, be of the same origin? I
conjecture also that the coulter of the plough, which cuts the earth
in a perpendicular direction, had the name of _sech_, and that the
words _säge_ and _sichel_ have an affinity to it. If this derivation
be right, the High but not the Low German must have of _sachs_ made
_sech_. The latter would have said _sas_ or _ses_, as it says instead
of _sechs_, _ses_; instead of _wachs_, _was_; instead of _flachs_,
_flas_; and instead of _fuchs_, _fos_. _Sech_ is named also _kolter_,
as in the Netherlands _kouter_, which words have arisen no doubt from
_culter_.
[841] Calvör Maschinenwesen, ii. p. 74.
[842] Anciens Minéral., i. p. 225.