treatise of Polybius, as quoted by Strabo, it is important to remark that we find the tin country distinctly recognized as being the British Islands, the vague or ambiguous name of the Cassiterides being dropped. It is so, likewise, in the account given by Diodorus. That writer observes that the people of the promontory of Belerium (the Bolerium of Ptolemy, and our present Land's End) were much more civilized than the other British nations, in consequence of their intercourse with the great number of foreign traders who resorted thither from all parts. This statement, written subsequently to Cæsar's expedition, warrants us in receiving that writer's assertion as to the superior refinement of the inhabitants of Kent as true only in a restricted sense. In fact, there were two points on the coast of the island separated by a long distance from each other, at which the same cause, a considerable foreign commerce and frequent intercourse with strangers, had produced the same natural effect. Diodorus goes on to describe the manner in which these ancient inhabitants of Cornwall prepared the tin which they exported. To this part of his description we shall afterwards have occasion to advert. After the tin has been refined and cast into ingots, he says, they convey it in wheeled carriages over a space which is dry at low water, to a neighbouring island, which is called Ictis; and here the foreign merchants purchase it, and transport it in their ships to the coast of Gaul, The Ictis of Diodorus has, by the majority of recent writers, been assumed to be the Isle of Wight, the Uectis of Ptolemy, and the Vectis or Vecta of some of the Latin writers. But this seems to us altogether an untenable supposition. It is impossible to believe either that Diodorus would call the Isle of Wight an island in the neighbourhood of the promontory of Bolerium, seeing that it is distant from that promontory about 200 miles, or that the people of Bolerium, instead of carrying down their tin to their own coast, would make a practice of transporting it by land carriage to so remote a point. Least of all is it possible to conceive how a journey could be accomplished by wheeled carriages from the Land's End to the
