[241] Layard's Nineveh, vol. ii p. 418.
[242] Natural History of Man, p. 191.
[243] Archæologia, vol. xxx. p. 248.
[244] Schlegel's Philosophy of History, Lecture II.
[245] Archæol. Journal, vol. vii. p. 68.
[246] Pennant, vol. ii. p. 250.
[247] "It seems our ancestors had more gold than silver, and indeed there are several places in Scotland where there has been much digging for gold. I have had the curiosity to consider the nature of them, and always found them just the same with those the Emperor has on the borders of Hungary, at two places, Nitria and Presburg. Those, like ours, consist of a vein or stratum of sand and gravel, which being brought up some fathoms from below ground, and washed, produce gold in very small particles."—Sir John Clerk to Mr. Gale, August 6, 1732; Biblo. Topog. Brit. vol. ii. p. 299.
In the Miscellanea Scotica, printed in 1710, various notices of the ancient working of gold in Scotland occur. Pieces of gold, mixed with spar and other substances, weighing thirty ounces, are described among the fruits of the Laughain and Phinland mines. See also Pennant's Tour, App. x. vol. iii. for a curious account "of the gold mines of Scotland."
The introduction of the metals into southern Europe in ancient times appears to have borne no analogy to that in the north. Gold was not used in the Roman coinage till B.C. 207, sixty-two years after the adoption of a silver coinage. So, too, in the records of sacred history, Abraham weighed unto Ephron 400 shekels of silver, current money with the merchant. The earliest notice of gold used otherwise than for jewels and ornaments only occurs in the reign of David, when he purchased the threshing-floor of Ornan for 600 shekels of gold by weight; 1 Chron. xxi. 25. Compare this with 2 Samuel xxiv. 24.
[248] Regist. de Dunferm. p. 16.