[3]
[3] Here follow two stories about crows and miners.--W.
Iron is found in many places, as in Sussex, Kent, Weredale, Mendip,
Walshall, as also in Shropshire, but chiefly in the woods betwixt
Belvos and Willock (or Wicberry) near Manchester, and elsewhere in
Wales. Of which mines divers do bring forth so fine and good stuff as
any that cometh from beyond the sea, beside the infinite gains to the
owners, if we would so accept it, or bestow a little more cost in the
refining of it. It is also of such toughness, that it yieldeth to the
making of claricord wire in some places of the realm. Nevertheless, it
was better cheap with us when strangers only brought it hither; for it
is our quality when we get any commodity to use it with extremity
towards our own nation, after we have once found the means to shut out
foreigners from the bringing in of the like. It breedeth in like
manner great expense and waste of wood, as doth the making of our pots
and table vessels of glass, wherein is much loss, sith it is so
quickly broken; and yet (as I think) easy to be made tougher, if our
alchemists could once find the true birth or production of the red
man, whose mixture would induce a metallic toughness unto it, whereby
it should abide the hammer.
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