Polybius comes next. "Perhaps, indeed, some will inquire why, having made so long a discourse concerning places in Libya and Iberia, we have not spoken more fully of the outlet at the Pillars of Hercules, nor of the interior sea, and of the peculiarities which occur therein, nor yet indeed of the Britannic Isles, and the working of tin; nor again, of the gold and silver mines of Iberia; concerning which writers, controverting each other, have discoursed very largely."--iii. 57. Lastly come half-a-dozen lines of doubtful antiquity, which the editors of the "_Monumenta Britannica_" have excluded from their series of extracts, on the score of their being taken from a non-existent or impossible author--a bard of no less importance than Orpheus. The ship Argo is supposed to speak, and say-- "For now by sad and painful trouble Shall I be encompassed, if I go too near the _Iernian Islands_. For unless, by bending within the holy headland, I sail within the bays of the land, and the barren sea, I shall go outward into the Atlantic Ocean." An important sentence occurs a few lines lower. The British Isles are spoken of-- ----"where (are) the wide houses of Demeter." This will be noticed in the sequel. No reason for excluding these lines lies in the fact of their being forgeries. Provided that they were composed before the time of Cæsar, the authorship matters but little. If, as is the common practice, we attribute them to Onomacritus, a cotemporary of Mardonius and Miltiades, they are older than the notice of Herodotus. It cannot be denied that these _data_ for the times anterior to Cæsar are scanty. A little consideration will shew that they can be augmented. Between the time of Julius Cæsar and Claudius--a period of nearly a hundred years--no new information concerning Britain beyond that which was given by Cæsar himself, found its way to Rome; since neither Augustus nor Tiberius followed up the aggressions of the Great Dictator. Consequently, the notices in the "_Bellum Gallicum_" exhaust the subject as far as it was illustrated by any Roman observers. Now if we find in any writer of the time of Augustus or Tiberius, notices of our island which can not be traced to Cæsar, they must be referred to other and earlier sources; and may be added to the list of the _Greek_ authorities. If we limit these overmuch, we confine ourselves unnecessarily. Inquiry began as early as the days of Herodotus; and opportunities increased as time advanced. The Baltic seems to have been visited when Aristotle wrote; and between his era and that of Polybius the intellectual activity of the Alexandrian Greeks had begun to work upon many branches of science--upon none more keenly than physical geography.