BLACK LEAD.

303

in ancient MSS. are presumed to have been made with thekeen edge of a round plate of lead, which the Greeks calledTrapaypapo;, also rpo^a^o;, yvpos, xuK^orvpvs, which last worddenotes the form. The latter Romans named it praduclcd.The rule by which those lines were drawn, the Greeks de-nominated xavuv and xavovif, which Catullus calls membranadirecta plumbo, from some wretched verses with whichSulfenus filled a tablet so ruled. Pollux hath irapaypapm rnxapaypaQiii. Vide Salmasius ad Solinum, p. 644, where somepassages will be found, in which those plates are described,quoted from the Anthologia. Of some we give a trans-lation: orbiculare plumbum, quod semitam novit sculpere,recta radens in rectum extensam regulam. Others are seenin some lines of Catullus , xxii. 7, p. 71. Also in the anno-tations of Vossius on that author, p. 54; and Hugo de scri-bendi origine, and others, borrowed from Saumaise . Pollux,iv. p. 258.

Le Moiue cites a document of the year 1387, which is, ashe says, ruled with black lead. lie also says, the custom ofruling for writing ceased some time about the beginning ofthe fifteenth century, and that after that period the linesbecame crooked and oblique. * 1

But, perhaps, the antiquity of the use of black-lead pen-cils cannot be so well determined from diplomatiques, astheir frequency might be proved from mineralogical writersand natural historians. The first mention discovered ofthese latter, occurs in the works of Conrad Gesner , who,in his book on Fossils, published at Zurich , anno 1565, says,that that people had pencils for writing with wooden han-dles, inclosing a piece of lead, which he believed to be anartificial composition, and it was called stimuli Anglicanum ?which seems to import that it \<as a British production,and we should consider from the name of this British antimonybeing given to it, that it might have been Cumberland black-lead. A figure also accompanies the description, fromwhence it appears to have been included in a wooden sheathor covering.

About thirty years afterwards Casalpinus gave a moreperfect account of this mineral, which he calls molybdoi-des, which name he thinks he finds in Dioscorides . He

1 Diplomatique-pratique, a Metz, 1765, 4to. p. 62 : Les lines sent tiroes aucrayon de mine de plomb.

1 Stylus inferius depictus, ad scribendum factus est, plumbi cujusdam (factitiiputo, quod aliquos stimuli Anglicura vocare audio) genere, in mucronera derasi, inmanubrium ligneum inserti. De return fossiliumjiguris, p. 104.