ill Brigantia and other parts of Britain. 255 



smelting of tin might be, and probably was, performed by the 

 inhabitants of the Cornish peninsula. This art they may 

 have brought from the far east ; Phoenicians may have taught 

 it them ; but all the accounts of the ancient tin trade repre- 

 sent the metal, and not the ore, as being carried away from 

 the Cassiterides. Diodorus mentions the weight and cubical 

 form of the tin in blocks, carried from Ictis to Marseilles 

 and Narbonne ; and Pliny says of the Gallician tin, that it 

 was melted on the spot. 



Did the Cornish or Gallician miners make bronze ? For 

 this is generally the compound indicated by the Roman ceris 

 metalla^ though it is undoubted that they also knew of, and 

 distinguished zinc brass. There is, I believe, no instance of 

 a single bit of pure tin or pure copper being found with the 

 numerous 'celts,' which occur in so many parts of England; 

 nor is any other proof given that the direct union of tin and 

 copper was effected by the natives of Britain. Copper is so 

 abundant in Cornwall that it might tempt to the other hypo- 

 thesis; but this copper is a sulphuret; it is found united to 

 the sulphuret of iron, in deep veins, and in a matrix of quartz; 

 and these are things which render the production of pure 

 copper one of the most refined operations in smelting. Caesar 

 tells us the brass used by the natives of Britain was imported. 

 Probably Cyprus, — colonized by the Phoenicians, to which 

 old authors refer as the original source of brass — Cyprus with 

 its ancient copper mines (Tamassus), which has given its name 

 to the metal, might be one of the points from which bronze 

 radiated over the Grecian, Roman and barbarian world. It 

 was from Cinyras, the king of Cyprus, that Agamemnon re- 

 ceived his splendid breastplate with twenty plates of tin, and 

 its liberal additions of turquoise, lazulite, or rather malachite, 

 obtained perhaps from the soil of the island. (Pliny, xxxiii. 

 p. 633, Hard.) 



The works of "H^ato-ro?, the Crawshay of antiquity, may 

 have been fixed on Lenmos on account of some volcanic ap- 

 pearances there; but the tradition shows at least that thevarious 

 operations of refined metallurgy were not strangers to the 

 islands of the Mediterranean ; and the uniformity of design 

 and composition in the ancient celts, chisels, fiuKcXXa, and in- 

 struments of war, implies a common, and that not a barbarous 

 origin. The perfection and variety and great proportions of 

 the brass work executed in the Grecian states and colonies, 

 may also be regarded as indicating the local seat of the early 

 as well as the later art of working in bronze. 



Lead was obtained in Spain and Gaul from deep and labo- 

 rious mines (xxxiv. p. 669, Hard.), but so abundantly near 



