["During the next stage to Darband, we passed ruins that I believe to be those of Marco Polo’s ‘Cobinan’ as the modern Kuhbenan does not at all fit in with the great traveller’s description, and it is just as well to remember that in the East the caravan routes seldom change.” (Captain P. M. Sykes, Geog.  Jour. X. p. 580.—­See Persia, ch. xxiii.)

Kuh Banan has been visited by Mr. E. Stack, of the Indian Civil Service. (Six Months in Persia, London, 1882, I. 230.)—­H.  C.]

NOTE 2.—­Tutty (i.e.  Tutia) is in modern English an impure oxide of zinc, collected from the flues where brass is made; and this appears to be precisely what Polo describes, unless it be that in his account the production of tutia from an ore of zinc is represented as the object and not an accident of the process.  What he says reads almost like a condensed translation of Galen’s account of Pompholyx and Spodos:  “Pompholyx is produced in copper-smelting as Cadmia is; and it is also produced from Cadmia (carbonate of zinc) when put in the furnace, as is done (for instance) in Cyprus.  The master of the works there, having no copper ready for smelting, ordered some pompholyx to be prepared from cadmia in my presence.  Small pieces of cadmia were thrown into the fire in front of the copper-blast.  The furnace top was covered, with no vent at the crown, and intercepted the soot of the roasted cadmia.  This, when collected, constitutes Pompholyx, whilst that which falls on the hearth is called Spodos, a great deal of which is got in copper-smelting.”  Pompholyx, he adds, is an ingredient in salves for eye discharges and pustules. (Galen, De Simpl.  Medic., p. ix. in Latin ed., Venice, 1576.) Matthioli, after quoting this, says that Pompholyx was commonly known in the laboratories by the Arabic name of Tutia.  I see that pure oxide of zinc is stated to form in modern practice a valuable eye-ointment.

Teixeira speaks of tutia as found only in Kerman, in a range of mountains twelve parasangs from the capital.  The ore got here was kneaded with water, and set to bake in crucibles in a potter’s kiln.  When well baked, the crucibles were lifted and emptied, and the tutia carried in boxes to Hormuz for sale.  This corresponds with a modern account in Milburne, which says that the tutia imported to India from the Gulf is made from an argillaceous ore of zinc, which is moulded into tubular cakes, and baked to a moderate hardness.  The accurate Garcia da Horta is wrong for once in saying that the tutia of Kerman is no mineral, but the ash of a certain tree called Goan.

(Matth. on Dioscorides, Ven. 1565, pp. 1338-40; Teixeira, Relacion de Persia, p. 121; Milburne’s Or.  Commerce, I. 139; Garcia, f. 21 v.; Eng.  Cyc., art. Zinc.)