CHAP. X.

MIDDLE AGES.

293

tion is confined exclusively to Scotland . NearGlasgow , at Crawford Moor, he learned thatgold had been found there in the reigns ofQueen Elizabeth and King James the First ;and that Sir John Erskine with four others, hadformed a plan for working the mines again.This Sir John Erskine was also a proprietor ofmines of silver at Alva, which had ceased to beworked in 1720 , having been for six years be-fore carried on under the direction of one Peek,an Englishman. Some silver mines near Lin-lithgow had been worked in the reign of MaryStuart , but had been long abandoned; and an-other about ten miles from Edinburgh , whoseore in the year 1607 had yielded from eachquintal twenty-two ounces of pure silver, hadbeen long abandoned. The professor noticesalso the gold mine belonging to Lord Hopton,near Moffat, which, he says, had been workedone hundred and fifty years before the time thathe was in Scotland .

We have now no knowledge of the mines ofsilver in the county of Tipperary in Ireland ,which the mines royal company are said tohave employed Germans to work. About theyear 1796, some stir was made in Ireland bygold having been found in the alluvial soil of thecounty of Wicklow, where some specimens of alarge size were discovered ; but though gold tothe value of ten thousand pounds was obtained,

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