W. A. E. Ussher — Historical Geology of Cornwall. 35 



gulf or Wolf-rock, happens not to be in that channel at all. but con- 

 siderably to the south of it ; and as to the stories of fishing up 

 pieces of doors and windows, and seeing tops of buildings, etc., had 

 all the buildings, doors, and windows of Cornwall, been placed 

 there, the first tempest would have swept thern all away, as pebbles 

 before a torrent. The truth is, that no such relics were ever dis- 

 covered, or could have remained for discovery, in that boisterous 

 channel of the Atlantic Ocean." 



With the above opinion I entirely agree, for the very mention of 

 windows dredged up is sufficient to refute any testimony of an 

 historical connexion of the Land's End with the Scilly Isles based 

 upon it. Except as fragments of wreck, it is impossible to conceive 

 the occurrence of such material in the places specified. 



(Peacock p. 140.) The tradition of the loss of area on the 

 West of Land's End is thus mentioned by Harrison (An Historical 

 Description of the Island of Britaine, by W. Harrison, prefixed to 

 Hollingshed's Chronicles, 1586, vol. i. lib. iii. ch. 10, p. 397) : '-'A 

 remarkable corroboration of Ptolemy's positions of the promontories 

 Belerium and Ocrinum," l as Mr. Peacock thinks, " It doth apeere 

 yet by good record, that whereas now there is a great distance 

 betweene the Syllan Isles and point of the Land's End, there was of 

 late years, to speke of scarslie a brooke or drain of one fadam water 

 betweene them, if so much, as these evidences appeereth and are yet 

 to be seene in the hands of the lord and chiefe owner of those Isles." 



Dr. Paris and Mr. Carne 3 considered that St. Just in the Land's 

 End district might have been meant by the word Cassiterides, owing 

 to the traces of tin in the Scilly Isles being insufficient to justify that 

 appellation. Mr. Carne, 3 speaking of Piper's Hole, in Tresco Island, 

 as a supposed adit of the ancient tin works, objected that as it is 

 above high- water, it is just such a site as would be selected now. 

 He further considers that, if any mines had ever been productive in 

 the Scilly Isles, some traces of diluvial tin ore would even now be 

 found from time to time in the low-lying tracts in St. Mary's, and on 

 the south-eastern side of Tresco. 



Mr. Peacock 4 quotes Diodorus Siculus as follows: — "Far beyond 

 Lusitania (Portugal) very much tin is dug out of the islands in the 

 ocean nearest to Iberia (Spain), which from the tin are named 

 Cassiterides." 



D. P. Alexandrinus, who flourished in the time of Augustus, says 

 in his Geography, line 599, etc. : " But beyond the Sacred Promontory 

 (Cape St. Yincent), which they affirm is the extremity of Europe, in 

 the islands Hesperides, where the source of tin is, the rich children 

 of the illustrious Iberi dwell." Mr. Peacock thinks that the Scilly 

 Isles are here alluded to under the name Hesperides. 



Strabo has told us that Publius Crassus saw that the metals were 



1 Peacock, p. 109. 



2 Mr. Carne (T.R.G.S. Corn. vol. ii. p. 354) says, " It is exceedingly probable 

 that the western extremity of England, of which St. Just forms a prominent part, 

 constituted the principal portion of what was formerly known under the name of the 

 Cassiterides." 



3 T.E.G.S. Corn. vol. vii. p. 153. 4 Peacock, p. 106. 



