[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.
KITCHEN VEGETABLES.
The greater part of our kitchen vegetables, that is to say those plants which, independently of the corn kinds, are cultivated as food in our gardens, are partly indigenous and partly foreign. Of the former many at present grow wild, such as asparagus; but by continued cultivation, through a long series of years, they have produced numerous varieties, which differ as much from the wild plants as the European females from those of New Zealand. Many of our indigenous vegetables are collected for food, but are not reared expressly for that purpose; and these even, in all probability, might be improved by culture. Some indeed are here and there reared in an artificial manner, though we reckon them among our weeds; for example, dandelion, Leontodon taraxacum, the first leaves of which in spring are employed in the northern countries as salad. In some parts of England this plant is sown throughout the whole summer; and its leaves being blanched, it is used in winter as endive. Culture frees many plants from their harsh taste, makes them tender, larger and more pulpy, and produces them at a season when the wild ones have become unfit for use.