iyi Brigantia and other parts of Britain. 251 



Why Pliny treats as a fable the story of the Cassiterides 

 yielding tin, is somewhat difficult to say. He classes the Cas- 

 siterides with Hispania, book iv. cap. xxii. (ex adverso sunt 

 insuiaj, — Cassiterides dictse Graecis, a fertilitate plumbi), and 

 speaks of Mictis (on the authority of Timaeus the historian) 

 as six days' sail from Britain, and as yielding candidum plum- 

 bum, iv. cap. IG. If the Cassiterides are the Ocrynian Pro- 

 montory and the Scilly Isles, from which, as recorded by 

 Strabo, the Phoenicians drew their tin ("I/crt? of Diodorus, 

 Mt/cTt? of Timaeus, and Ovr)KTL<i of Ptolemy being Vectis or 

 Wight, from which the tin was carried through France to 

 Marseilles), we may suppose that in the early period the only 

 route for the tin of Cornwall to the Mediterranean was by sea 

 to the western parts of Spain ; but that in the latter period 

 the track by land through Gaul to Massilia was preferred, 

 and the old trade had become a tradition which Pliny chose 

 not to adopt from Strabo, who is never quoted on this subject 

 by the author of the Historia Naturalis, but may be obliquely 

 and slightingly alluded to. Whether tin occurs at all in any 

 part of the Spanish Peninsula can hardly be doubtful after the 

 assertion of Pliny. He had been procurator in Spain, and by 

 his intimacy with Vespasian* must be supposed in position to 

 learn much of Britain, from the despatches of Petilius Cerealis, 

 Ostorius Scapula, and Agricola. But he was suffocated by 

 the fumes of Vesuvius in 79, one year after the appointment 

 of Agricola to Britain — and for the greater part of his literary 

 life, Britain was a scene of never-ending war and confusion. 

 Besides this, the Cornish promontory appears to have been at 

 no time much occupied by Roman stations, or traversed by 

 roads ; and it may be thought to have had then, as afterwards 

 in Saxon and Norman times, a history and commerce quite 

 distinct from and little known to the Belgic settlers in Albion. 

 He might be mistaken respecting Britain, of which perhaps 

 he could know only Albion ; but his positive assurance of the 

 occurrence of tin in Spain is confirmed by a passage in Bowles's 

 Natural History of Spain, and, as I hear from Mr. Kenrick, 

 by a later German writer (Hopfensach); it occurs, in fact, 

 according to one of our best books of mineralogy, in beds in 

 the mica schist of Gallicia. (W. Phillips, 1823.) Oxide of 

 tin has been found, besides, on both sides of the Erzegebirge 

 in granite, at Puy de Vignes (Haute Vienne), also in granite 

 in Wicklow (granite), on the east coast of Sumatra, Siam and 

 Pegu, and in Banca and Malacca. It has been found in 

 Mexico, Chili and Greenland, and mixed with other matters 

 in Finland and Sweden. 



* Accessit imp. a.d. 69. 



