TIN. 161 
Herodotus, 450 years before Christ, is believed to allude to the tin 
islands of Britain under the cabalistic name Cassiterides, derived from 
the Greek kassiteros, signifying tin. Tico Phceenicians are allowed to 
have traded with Cornubia (as Cornwail was called, it is supposed 
oe the horn-like shape of this extremity of England’. The Greeks 
residing at Marseilles were the next to visit Cornwall, or the isles ad- 
jacent, to purchase tin; and after them came the Romans, whose 
merchants were long foiled in their attempts to discover the tin markct 
of their predecessors. 
Camden says: ‘‘ It is plain that the ancient Britons dealt in tin mines 
from the testimony of Diodorus Siculus, who lived in the reign of 
Augustus, and Timaus, the historian in Pliny, who tells us that the 
Britons fetched tin out of the Isle of Icta (the Isle of Wight), in their 
little wicker boats covered with leather. . The impcrt of the passage 
in Diodorus is that the Britons who lived in those parts dug tin cut cf 
a rocky sort of ground, and carried it in carts at low water to certain 
neighboring islands ; and that from thence the merchants first trans- 
ported it to Gaul, and afterwards on horseback in thirty days to the 
springs of Eridanus, or the city of Narbona, as to a common mart. 
Aathicus too, another ancient writer, intimates the same thing, and 
adds that he had himself given directions to the workmen.” In the 
opinion of the learned author of the Britannica here quoted, and others 
who have followed him, the Saxons seem not to have meddled with 
the mines, or, according to tradition, to have employed the Saracers ; 
for the inhabitants of Cornwall to this day call a mine that is given 
over working Attal-Surasin, that is, the leavings of the Saracens. 
The Cornwall veins, or lodes, mostly run east and west, with a dip 
—hade, in the provincial Halos —sat ane from north to south ; yet 
they are very irregular, sometimes crossing each other, and scmetimes 
a promising vein abruptly narrows or disappears ; or again they spread 
out into a kind of bed or floor. ‘The veins are considered worth work- 
ing when but three inches wide. The gangue is mostly quartz, with 
some chlorite. Much of the tin is also obtained from beds of locse 
stones or gravel (called shvdes\, and courses of such gravel or tin de- 
bris are called streams, whence the name strcam tin. 
The Australian mines are mainly in the New England district cf 
Northern New South Wales, and the adjoining part cf Queensland. ard 
a large part of the ore goes north through Queensland. The value cf 
the tin exported in 1875 from Queensland was £88,224, and from New 
South Wales (Ann. Rep. Dept. of N. 8S. W. Mines, 1876), £561,311, cor- 
responding to 6,058 tons of tin in ingots, besides 2,022 tons of ore. 
The value of all the tin raised in N. S. Wales, prior to 1875 is £866,461. 
Beechwood, Victoria, also affords a little tin. 
The annual production of tin in 1871 in Great Britain was 11,3° 
tons, and in Banca and Malacca, 7,500. 
Tin is used in castings, and also for coating other metals, especially 
iron and copper. Copper vessels thus coated were in use among the 
Romans, though not common. Pliny says that the tinned articles 
could scarcely be distinguished from silver, and his use of the words 
ineoyuere and tncoctilia seems to imply, as a writer states, that the 
process was the same as for the iron wares of the present day, by 7m- 
mersing tv2 vessels i, melted tin. Its alloys with copper are mentioned 
on page it, 
