belonging to cottagers renting houses in right of which a limited depasturage of cattle is claimed. Its temperature is some degrees colder than that of Penzance, or of the southern coast, being exposed to cold winds from the N. and N.W. Sea fogs coming from the south are prevalent and somewhat unpleasant, but they are temperate; and, unlike those arising from marshes, contain no miasma, and are not unwholesome. The air is much charged with saline particles, producing verdure through the greater part both of summer and winter. The soil in general is shallow and light, consisting of decomposed granite and peat earth, and therefore not producing heavy crops of wheat, but it is good dairy land, and yields ample crops of barley, oats, turnips, and potatoes, which are extensively cultivated. The farms are mostly small, and a considerable portion are held on lease for lives. The occupiers of them being often interested in mines, the good cultivation of the soil has not always been considered so great an object as the adaptation of it to their immediate and more profitable purpose of enabling them to keep a few horses to work at the mines, and to draw materials to and from them. On the larger farms the cultivation used to be very bad, but of late years a much-improved system has been successfully adopted; the drill has been introduced, and as good crops of rota baga turnips for winter feeding, and the supply of the market, are grown here, as in more fertile soils. A custom is very commonly adopted by the farmers of letting cows to dairy-men for £8 a-year for each cow for the season of forty weeks; thus the farmer saves all the trouble and

expense attendant on the dairy department of his farm. Many of the miners rent a single cow, and not unfrequently a half a cow is rented, that is, a cow between two families, each family milking her alternately. As the population is dense, this produces a competition for land, and the rents are consequently high. Garden cultivation is much improving; almost every family raises a certain breadth of potatoes, which, with salt fish (mostly pilchards) constitute the chief article of the miners' food. A few years since, no other vegetable was cultivated nor eaten by the miner, nor a flower seen to enliven his dirty hovel; now, neatness prevails within and without, and most of the cottages have small gardens well stocked with a variety of culinary vegetables, and in many may be seen a gay display of hardy flowers. Some of the cottagers have obtained well-merited prizes and medals from the Penzance Horticultural Society.

The mines, producing both tin and copper, give employment to a large population. The tabular view beneath will shew a vast increase in the last forty years.

In this calculation, however, some allowance should be made for a defective enumeration in 1831, and an influx of miners at present from other parishes where

mines are less flourishing than in St. Just. The increase of houses, however, built within the last ten years, will show a rapidly increasing population and the prosperous state of the inhabitants. The number of persons registered as qualified to vote for Members for the county this year, 1841, is 274.

κασσίτερος,

This is perhaps one, if not the very oldest mining district in the county; for opposite to the shores of the parish and about seven or eight leagues distant are distinctly seen in clear weather the cluster of the Scilly Islands, the Cassiterides of the Ancients, so called from the Greek word kασσiтepoç, tin. To these islands and to the adjacent shores the Phoenicians traded centuries before the Christian æra for tin, copper, and perhaps gold, which is supposed to have been then found in small quantities in the stream works. As might be expected the remains of very ancient workings bear testimony to this fact. At the Bunny, near Botallack mine, the excavations on the surface are very curious and quite picturesque. On the tenement of Bosorn, in the side of the hill overhanging the sea, the old workings are extensive, and in many other places are to be traced the labours of former ages; having all the same character of superficial search only, but not being explored by shafts sunk according to the modern system of mining, they may be regarded, according to my view, as mines to which the Ancients had recourse for their tin at a very early period.

On several of the headlands on the sea-shore, namely Cape Cornwall, Kenijack Castle, and others, are still found traces of old enclosures, and the remains of some of those very ancient fortifications so common on all

these coasts; by what people erected, whether by the Aborigines to defend their country, or by foreign invaders to secure themselves and their plunder, or as safe depositories of the metals collected for exportation, is a difficult problem which no antiquary has yet, nor probably ever will satisfactorily solve. These remains however and the marks of enclosures of land, now waste, lead to the conclusion that this part of the country was thickly inhabited in former ages. That the Phoenicians traded here for tin is a conjecture that may receive some strength from the passage of Ezekiel where amongst the glories of ancient Tyre the Prophet says of her (chap. xxvii. 12.) "Tarshish was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of all kind of riches; with silver, iron, tin, and lead, they traded in thy fairs." Diodorus Siculus, who lived in the Augustine age, and Timæus the historian in Pliny, tell us that the Britons dealt in tin; the latter says, that the Britons fetched tin out of the Isle Icta in their little wicker boats covered with leather; Diodorus, that they dug tin out of a rocky ground and carried it in carts at low water to certain neighbouring islands, whence the merchants transported it into Gaul, and then on horseback in thirty days to the springs of Eridanus, or the city of Narbona, as to a common mart. Scawen in his MS. adds that the Jews, as well as Phoenicians, were very ancient traders in Phoenician ships, and settled in Cornwall long before the Norman conquest, in proof of which, he remarks, that we have here at this day many ancient places known by their names in the British tongue, as Bojewyan, in St. Just, the Jews' dwelling. Trejewas, the Jews' village. Marazion, the Jews' market.

The Phoenicians and Greeks, having traded to these parts for many centuries, it might be expected that some occasional vestiges of their religion should be found. In January 1832, John Lawry, a workman employed at St. Just vicarage, was pulling down an old stone hedge and trenching ground for planting, when he discovered the foundation of an old building, and from the quantity of ashes remaining, it was conjectured that the premises had been burnt; near this place he found a bronze figure of a bull, of the exact size shewn in the drawing.

It was shewn to some of the most learned antiquaries in London, who pronounced it to be Phoenician. Among the gods of the ancient Gauls, and therefore of the Druids, as we read, Rel: de Gaul: vol. i. p. 72, some reckon the bull. By this god, made of brass, the Cimbri, Teutones, and Ambrones, swore to observe the articles of capitulation granted to the Romans who defended the Adige against them. After their defeat, Catulus ordered the bull to be carried to his own house, there to remain as the most glorious monument of his victory This god is ranked with Jupiter, Esus and Vulcan.