i 7 6 NATURAL HISTORY 
to fee how ready and exad thefe reckoners are in dividing, though 
oftentimes they can neither write nor read. The parcels being laid 
forth, lots are call, and then every parcel has a diftind mark laid 
on it with one, two, or three Hones, and fometimes a bit of Hick or 
turf ftuck up in the middle or fide of the pile; and when thefe marks 
are laid on, the parcels may continue there half a year or more 
unmolefted ; the property is fixed, and no one may add to, or 
diminilli it. 
sect. xvi. What the ancient method was of preparing tin for the furnace, 
Ramping we canno t fay ; but Polybius the Hiftorian is faid to have defcribed 
tin. r Ulg it, and that work is commended by Strabo d , but now loft with 
other valuable compofitions of that judicious author. The fhort 
defeription which we have of the tin-trade in Diodorus Siculus 
(lib. iv. page 301, edit. Hanov. 1664) muft not be omitted, though 
it is too general for us to learn many particulars Irom it. “ Thefe 
men (fays he, meaning the tinners) manufacture their tin by working 
the grounds which produce it with great art. For though the land 
is rocky, it has foft veins of earth running through it in which the 
tinners find the treafure, extrad, melt, and purify it ; then fhaping 
it [by moulds] into a kind of cubical figure, they carry it off to 
a certain ifland lying near the Britilh fhore, which they call Idis ; 
for at the recefs of the tide, the fpace betwixt the ifland and the 
main land being dry, the tinners 'embrace the opportunity, and 
carry their tin in carts, as faft as may be, over to the Idis (or port) ; 
for it muft be obferved, that the iflands which lie betwixt the con- 
tinent and Britain, have this Angularity, that when the tide is full, 
they are real iflands; but when the fea retires, they are but fo many 
peninfulce . From this ifland the merchants buy the tin of the na- 
tives, and export it into Gaul ; and, finally, through Gaul, by a 
journey of about thirty days, they bring it down on horfes to the 
mouth of the Erydanus, meaning the Rhone c .” In this defeription 
it will naturally occur to the inquifitive reader to alk, where this 
Idis was to which the Cornifti carried their melted tin in carts, and 
there fold it to the merchants. I really cannot inform him ; but by 
the Idis here, it is plain that the Hiftorian could not mean the Idis 
or Vedis of the ancients (at prelent called the Ifle of Wight), lor 
he is Ipeaking of the Britans of Cornwall, and, by the words, it 
Ihould leem, thofe of the moft weftern parts. Trig yap Bgsjamrie 
tcocla to uz^icIyi^iov to xaX 8 y.£vov B stepiov 01 xuloixavlsc, & c. O vlot toy 
xacraflsgov xoclaaxivxfeai cpiholsyvxc, &c. that is, “ thofe who live at the 
4 Geogra. lib. ii. feilles, fays Poflidonius, in Strabo, lib. iii, page 
• Rhodanus, fays the Latin tranflation ; to Mar- 147, edit. Par. 1620. 
extreme 
