Phocaea is not enumerated by Pliny (Hist. Nat. xxxv. 52) among the places productive of alum: he reckons Egypt as the first, and for the second the Isle of Melos, whose alum mines are described by Tournefort (tom. i. lettre iv.), a traveller and a naturalist. After the loss of Phocaea, the Genoese, in 1459, found that useful mineral in the Isle of Ischia (Ismael. Bouillaud, ad Ducam, c. 25).