a game amongst the Romans, of much the same nature with our chess. The latrunculi were properly the chess-men, called also latrones and calculi. They were made of glass, and distinguished by black and white colours. Sometimes they were made of wax or other convenient substances. Some give the invention of this game to Palamedes when at the siege of Troy; Seneca attributes it to Chilon, one of the seven Grecian sages; others honour Pyrrhus with the invention; and others again contend that it is of Persian origin—but is not this Lis de lana caprina? Frequent allusions to this game are met with in the Roman classics, and a little poem was wrote upon it addressed to Piso, which some say was the work of Ovid, others of Lucan, in the end of some editions of whose works it is to be found, and to which we refer for a fuller account of the game. This game expresses so well the chance and order of war, that it is, with great appearance of probability, attributed to some military officer as the inventor. One Canius Julius was so exceedingly fond of chess, that after he was sentenced to death by Caligula, he was found playing, but interrupted in his game by a call to execution; he obeyed the summons, but first desired the centurion who brought the fatal order, to bear witness that he had one man upon the board more than his antagonist, that he might not falsely brag of victory when he should be no more.

LATEN denotes iron-plates turned over, of which tea-cannisters are made.

Plates of iron being prepared of a proper thinness, are smoothed by rubbing them in an acid liquor, as common water made eager with rye. With this liquor they fill certain troughs, and then put in the plates, which they turn once or twice a day, that they may be equally rubbed over. After this they are taken out, and well scoured with sand; and, to prevent their rusting again, are immediately plunged into pure water, in which they are to be left till the instant they are to be tinned or blanched; the manner of doing which is this: They flux the tin in a large iron crucible, which has the figure of an oblong pyramid with four faces, of which two opposite ones are less than the two others. The crucible is heated only from below, its upper part being luted with the furnace all round. The crucible is always deeper than the plates which are to be tinned are long; they always put them in downright, and the tin ought to swim over them; to this purpose artificers of different trades prepare plates of different shapes, though Mr Reaumur thinks them all exceptional. But the Germans use no sort of preparation of the iron to make it receive the tin more than the keeping it always steeped in water till the time; only when the tin is melted in the crucible, they cover it with a layer of a sort of fuel, which is usually two inches thick, and the plate must pass through this before it can come to the melted tin. The first use of this covering is to keep the tin from burning; for if any part should take fire, the fuel would soon moisten it, and reduce it to its primitive state again. The blanchers say, this fuel is a compounded matter. It is indeed of a black colour; but Mr Reaumur supposed that to be only an artifice to make it a secret, and that it is only coloured with soot or the smoke of a chimney: but he found it true so far, that the common unprepared fuel was not sufficient; for after several attempts, there was always something wanting to render the success of the operation certain. The whole secret of blanching, therefore, was found to lie in the preparation of this fuel; and this at length he discovered to consist only in the first frying and burning it. This simple operation not only gives it the colour, but puts it into a condition to give the iron a disposition to be tinned, which it does surprisingly.

The melted tin must also have a certain degree of heat: for if it is not hot enough, it will not stick to the iron; and if it is too hot, it will cover it with too thin a coat, and the plates will have several colours, as red, blue, and purple, and upon the whole will have a cast of yellow. To prevent this, by knowing when the fire has a proper degree of heat, they might try with small pieces of iron; but in general, use teachers them to know the degree, and they put in the iron when the tin is at a different standard of heat, according as they would give it a thicker or thinner coat. Sometimes also they give the plates a double layer, as they would have them very thickly covered. This they do by dipping them into the tin when very hot the first time, and when less hot the second. The tin which is to give the second coat must be fresh covered with fuel; and that with the common fuel, not the prepared.