22 On the Phcenician Tin Trade in Cornwall, by R. Edmonds. 
the Mediterranean, and wrote for those who knew little or nothing 
about the ebbing and the flowing of tides, so that after having 
described the Isle of Iktin as accessible by carts " during the 
recess of the tide," he was obliged to explain himself, and to illus- 
trate the effects of the tides, by adding, — " and it is something 
peculiar that happens to the islands in these parts lying between 
Europe and Britain ; for at the full tide, the intervening passage 
being overflowed, they appear islands, but when the sea retires, a 
large space is left dry and they are seen as peninsulas." This 
explanation of what his countrymen would have regarded as highly 
improbable, is literally true ; for he does not say, as the reviewer 
imagines, that all the islands between Europe and Britain came 
within this description, — nor, indeed, that any of them did, which 
were in deep water like the Isle of Wight ; but he speaks only of 
those which, like the Mount, were in shallow water and on the 
coast. 
The only reason given by the reviewer for considering the Isle 
of Wight to be the ancient Iktin, is its being nearer than the 
Mount to Gaul, and because Diodorus says that from Iktin " the 
traders purchase the tin of the natives and transport it into Gaul; 
and, finally, travelling through Gaul on foot, in about 30 days 
they bring their burdens on horses to the mouth of the river 
Rhone." This passage, however, particularly the word finally, 
which I have italicized, seems rather to show that the tin was 
carried most of the way from Iktin to the mouth of the Rhone by 
sea, and therefore probably to the inmost part of the Bay of Biscay, 
and from thence by land to Marseilles, at the mouth of the Rhone, 
to avoid sailing round the Spanish peninsula, as was the more 
ancient route while Tyre and Tarshish were flourishing. And it 
is remarkable that the sandy parish of Lelant, in the bay of St. 
Ives, only four miles from the Mount, is called by the same name 
as Les Landes, the sandy coast of the Bay of Biscay, {t and d 
being interchangeable letters,) as if the one name had been de- 
