_Early Use of Tin._--_Derivation of the Name of Britain_ (Vol. viii., pp.
290. 344. 445.).--Your correspondent G. W. having been unable to inform DR.
HINCKS who first suggested the derivation of _Britannia_ from _Baratanac_
or _Bratanac_, I have the pleasure to satisfy him on this point by
referring him to Bochart's _Geographia Sacra_, lib. I. c. xxxix. In that
great storehouse of historical information, the Memoirs of the Academy of
Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres, there are some profound researches by
Melot and others, in which may be found answers to all the Queries proposed
by G. W.
The islands, rivers, mountains, cities, and remarkable places of Phoenician
colonies, had even in the time of the habitation of the Greeks and Romans
Phoenician names, which, according to the spirit of the ancient languages
of the East, indicated clearly the properties of the places which bore
those names. See instances in Bochart, _ubi supra_; Sammes's _Britannia
Antiqua Illustrata, or the Antiquities of Ancient Britain derived from the
Phoenicians_; and D'Hancarville's Preface to Hamilton's _Etruscan, &c.
Antiquities_.