On turning from Europe to the East we find other proofs that tin has been known from the most remote antiquity. It is mentioned in the Book of Numbers (xxxi. 22) among the spoil which the children of Israel gained by their victory over the Midianites; and Ezekiel, in his prophetic warning to the Tyrians, enumerates tin as forming part of their riches. [Illustration: ST. MICHAEL’S MOUNT, CORNWALL.] It is frequently noticed by Homer as a substance used for architectural ornaments or for the embellishment of the armour of his heroes, and its Greek name ‘Kassiteros,’ which evidently represents the Sanscrit ‘Kastira,’ leaves no doubt as to the part of the world from which it was first obtained. The tin which, in times unrecorded by chronology, served for the consumption of Western Asia, Egypt, and Greece, was supplied by the mines of India to the Phœnician traders, who conveyed it, either by land to Babylon, or by water to the ports of the Red Sea. At a much later period that great merchant people extended their maritime expeditions to the West, and sailing along the Atlantic coast of Gaul, ultimately discovered Cornwall, which afforded them a new and inexhaustible supply of tin. With the jealous spirit of trade, they long made a profound secret of its position; but about 450 years before Christ, Herodotus speaks of the Cassiterides, or tin islands, which some have supposed to be Britain. Four centuries later Diodorus Siculus, who lived in the times of Julius Cæsar and Augustus, gives us an interesting account of the ancient tin trade of Britain. ‘The inhabitants of that extremity of Britain which is called Bolerion’ (probably Land’s End), says the historian whose narrative is the more deserving of attention as we are told that he visited all the places he mentions: ‘both excel in hospitality and also, by reason of their intercourse with foreign merchants, they are civilized in their mode of life. These prepare the tin, working very skilfully the earth which produces it. The ground is rocky, but it has in it earthy veins, the produce of which is brought down and melted and purified. Then, when they have cast it into the form of cubes, they carry it to a certain island adjoining to Britain and called Iktis (probably St. Michael’s Mount). During the recess of the tide the intervening space is left dry, and they carry over abundance of tin to this place on their carts; and it is something peculiar that happens to the islands in these parts lying between Europe and Britain, for at full tide, the intervening passage being overflowed, they appear islands, but when the sea returns a large space is left dry and they are seen as peninsulas. From hence, then, the traders purchase the tin of the natives and transport it into Gaul, and finally, travelling through Gaul on foot, in about thirty days they bring their burdens on horseback to the river Rhone.’ Thus we learn from an authentic source how the tin