Page:The parochial history of Cornwall.djvu/180

138 building; it is exported in great quantities from Penryn. Nearly the whole western half of the parish is coarse; but the eastern part is well cultivated. The soil rests on a species of hornblend slate, which furnishes deep soil by its decomposition.

On the sea shore at Swanpool a most interesting phenomenon occurs in a bed of felspar porphyry, (elvan course,) which runs north-east and south-west for several hundred feet: near low water it exhibits that appearance called by the miners a heave. The course terminates abruptly, and begins again about twenty feet further to the south, from whence it goes on as before the heave.

This porphyry is decomposed at the surface and to some depth, into a fine white clay, from which bricks of a good quality are made on the spot.

Burian is situated at the western extremity of the county, having two adjoining parishes, Senner and St. Levan annexed; the former of which includes the Lands' End. In Domesday tax this district was rated by the name of Beriand, for Berian or Bury-an; synonymous words, signifying a cemetery or burying place for human creatures; that is to say, that place which is now called the churchyard, which was an inclosure, as in most other places, converted to that use before and since the church was erected therein. This instance of a Domesday Roll, wherein this district is named Beri-an, overthrows the story of Camden's conjecture, that the name thereof was derived from one St. Buryana, an