Pliny the Elder points out that orichalcum had lost currency due to the mines being exhausted. Pseudo-Aristotle in "De mirabilibus auscultationibus" (62) describes a type of copper that is "very shiny and white, not because there is tin mixed with it, but because some earth is combined and molten with it." This might be a reference to orichalcum obtained during the smelting of copper with the addition of "cadmia", a kind of earth formerly found on the shores of the Black Sea, which is attributed to be zinc oxide.