set with its back to a hedge, the actual cross being plain on a round head, 4 feet 7 inches in height, the head 1 foot 7 inches by 1 foot 5 inches. This cross is quite loose in its socket-a "logan stone cross in fact-and if not soon fixed, will doubtless be pushed over.

The footpath to reach this particular cross starts opposite the gates of the old mansion of the parish, and a curious stile, made of four pieces of granite, fifteen inches apart, with a deep miniature chasm below, so that a human being can use the stepping-stones, but not cattle. The ingenuity displayed in making this form of stile is characteristically Celtic.

But there is yet another old Celtic cross to be seen at this spot. Immediately beside this quaint stile on the west side in a piece of roadside waste it stands, at right angles to the road. I have noticed that in most cases when these crosses are so placed that both sides are visible to passersby, each side has a cross cut upon it. This cross has, nearest the stile, a plain cross running the whole length of the pedestal, and on the reverse the cross is confined to the round head. The monument is five feet high, and the head is two feet in breadth and 1 foot 8 inches in height. The round base upon which the cross is fixed was so completely overgrown with thick moss, that at first I thought it was simply a monolith stuck upright in the soil, as so many of these crosses are. But I found on pulling off a sheet of moss two inches in thickness, which came readily away, it had, as I have said, a circular granite foundation.

From whichever side, therefore, this monument is approached a cross is visible, or used to be before the trees and rank growth of weeds obscured its position.

Pursuing the road further towards Land's End, that is, in a westerly direction, a sign-post is reached on the left indicating that in that direction (south) is the Logan Rock. Some fields and stiles have to be crossed before the promontory of Treryn is reached, or, as it is called, Castle Treryn, because the neck of land has evidently been fortified, the remains of the walls and ditches being plainly visible. Cyrus Redding, who described the spot in 1842, wrote that those "who have a feeling for the grand in nature, and desire to see granite rocks of astonishing dimensions, piled

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to an enormous height, the sea thundering at their bases, creating a wild shore of adamant, should not omit visiting Castle Treryn." Certainly nature is here grand, and many will think after visiting the place that the Logan Stone itself is the least interesting part of the show, for it is not exempt from a suspicion of artificiality.

The story is somewhat sordid. Dr. Borlase, the old historian of Cornwall, said that it was "morally impossible that any lever, or indeed force (however applied in a mechanical way), could remove it." This sort of absurd challenge to the world was probably for a long time superstitiously believed in and disregarded. The stone was considered a sort of rock deity by the Druids, it is said, and used by them to impose on the credulous as possessing the virtues of testing the guilt or innocence of persons accused of crime.

"Behold yon huge

And unknown sphere of living adamant,
Which, poised by magic, rests its central weight
On yonder pointed rock, firm as it seems,
Such is its strange and virtuous property,

It moves obsequious to the gentlest touch

Of him whose breast is pure; but to a traitor
Tho' ev'n a giant's prowess nerved his arm,
It stands as fixed as Snowdon."

At any rate, Lieutenant Goldsmith, R.N., nephew to the poet, put the Logan Stone to the test and overturned it. In 1824 he had command of a cutter in the neighbourhood, and went to Treryn Castle with some twelve of his men, and threw the rock from its hollow basin on which it had rested from time immemorial. Luckily it did not roll down the cliff into the sea, but was caught in the recesses of other rocks near. It was a foolhardy piece of bravado work, quite senseless in its inception. The feeling engendered at the time by this exploit of the young lieutenant is best shown by the following letter, which appeared in the Annals of Philosophy for May, 1824 :—

"DEAR SIR,

"PLYMOUTH, April 18th, 1824.

"Your geological readers will hear with infinite regret that the celebrated Logan Stone in Cornwall, which has for so long a period been regarded as an object of great

national interest and curiosity, and which has been visited by persons from the remotest extremity of Europe, has within the last few days been overturned by one of the Lieutenants of his Majesty's navy, now commanding a revenue cutter, stationed between the Lizard and Land's End, assisted by a party of his men. The barbarous and wanton folly which could induce an officer bearing his Majesty's commission to commit so unwarrantable an act, as to remove a great national curiosity from a position in which it had stood for ages, defying the hand of time, and affording to the enlightened traveller an object of such singular interest, will, it is hoped, be visited with the severest displeasure of the Admiralty. In a tour through Cornwall in the summer of 1821, I was informed by a cottager who lived near the spot, that an attempt was made by a party of seamen some years before, to remove it, but without success. Cornwall, by this wanton outrage, has lost one of the most interesting monuments.

"I remain, dear Sir, yours very truly,

"G. W. HARVEY."

The result was that a great outcry was raised, and the' lieutenant had to restore the stone to its original position at much expense. The county historian, Davies Gilbert, gave £25 towards the cost, and applied to the Admiralty for the use of tackle and machinery at Plymouth, which was granted. Easy to overturn, its replacement must have been a Herculean task, particularly in those days, and the lieutenant, no doubt, had a practical lesson in hydraulics and mechanics which ought to have stood him in good stead in after-life.

However, "not wholly bad was even that," as Lysander Pratt would say, for the flat stone of the famed Lanyon Cromlech, or Quoit, forty-seven feet in circumference and weighing about twenty tons, slipped off the supporting monolith during a violent storm a few years after, and was replaced by the same powerful machinery which restored the Logan Stone to its original position.

I have seen a print of the process of replacing the Logan Stone, which shows the gigantic nature of the undertaking. A perfect forest of derricks, poles, blocks, and ropes had to