Bible or other safe depository: or a small book might be made of several sheets printed on both sides. To all acquainted with the ordinary business of life it must have occurred how necessary it is to preserve a faithful record of Births, Marriages, Deaths, and the grants of Probates and Administrations and at the same time how negligent the majority of persons are in doing so. From the want of such authentic documents, time and money are repeatedly wasted in tracing pedigrees, establishing titles to estates, and even in placing out young folks as apprentices, and in the various situations of life. Whilst the visitations of the Herald's College were holden, the births, &c. of the Gentry were faithfully registered; so that it is now much easier to prove a Gentleman's pedigree, anterior to the last visitation, in 1620, than from any subsequent period. In 1820 Sir George Nayler, afterwards the successor of Sir Isaac Heard as Garter King at Arms, came to Bodmin from Town for the express purpose of examining our Registers, and spent several days in the County in endeavouring to authenticate a pedigree of the Blighs. And that it may not be thought useless to record the births, &c. of persons in the humblest station of life, we may refer to a case just decided in Doctors Commons, where the claimants of very considerable property sued as next-of-kin of a married couple, who it appears migrated from Burian to Bodmin, and in 1722, produced the then usual certificate, that they might not become chargeable to the Town of Bodmin. In the interesting report on Parochial Registration, printed by the House

of Commons in 183, the difficulties arising from unknown or defective Registers are fully stated, and two Acts were passed in this last Session, as we have noticed at p. 340, for providing one general but more minute mode of registry of all Births, Marriages, and Deaths, throughout England and Wales, from the 1st of March, 1837. The Arabs have a saying "No one knows where his grave will be made," and when we observe how families and individuals are severed and dispersed in the present day, we must perceive the necessity of recording the times and places of births, and other circumstances in the form subjoined. Such a Register may also serve as a friendly monitor to parents in every rank of life, and especially among the labouring classes, to look upon their children as the gift of God, as beings born for eternity, and far different from the beasts that perish; and to consider that the periods of their Births, Baptisms, Marriages, and Deaths, are no trivial events, but such as may, by their influence on their future and eternal destiny, be remembered, when other scenes of this probationary existence shall have gone by for ever. It is also not unfrequently a sign of sober consideration and sound moral feeling, when we find persons in humbler life mindful of the day of their own birth, and likewise that of their children and relatives; and to encourage the habit in all, and aid the many useful purposes connected with it, we prepared the following form, and have now shewn, by filling up several of the blanks, how it may be used.

July 3, 1827. On this day we commenced this Register, with the intention of publishing some authentic particulars concerning the past and present state of the Parish of Bodmin. We have pursued our object at irregular periods, during the last ten years, having extended our views to the County of Cornwall ; and, in a supplemental Number, to the whole Diocese of Exeter. We shall now review our pages, and make such additions and corrections as the lapse of time renders necessary, or the information since obtained enables us to supply. It should be recollected that we do not publish for profit, and that the notes, observations, and data, are offered as collections only, and that even though apparently hasty and unconnected, they may assist the labours of others, and tend to the introduction of a more correct system of Topography and Statistics throughout Cornwall, if not in other parts of the United Kingdom.

p. 11. Stealing of the Body of St. Petrock. The original account is as follows, copied from Mr. Davies Gilbert's Particulars respecting the stealing of the Body of St. Neot, and conveying it to Huntingdonshire, about A. D. 974.

"However frequently these disgraceful acts of fraud and violence may have occurred in times when avarice, vanity, and pride were heightened and protected by their natural alliance with fanaticism, it must be deemed extraordinary that a theft precisely similar should have taken place in the neighbouring Monastery of St. Petroc, at Bodmin. The following extract from Benedictus Abbas, a contemporary author, in his Life