Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 2.djvu/105

 rare. Owing to the peculiar mildness of its climate, this district, as in compensation for the paucity of its fixed inhabitants of the feathered kind, can boast of more than its proportional share of those of the migratory kind. In the winter months, snipes, and more especially woodcocks, are found in immense numbers. When the season is at all severe, the quantity of the latter brought to Penzance market in one day, is often very great. This may be judged from the fact of their being commonly sold (in 1819 and 1820,) on such occasions for six-pence each, and occasionally for four-pence. Snipes are equally plentiful and cheap, being frequently sold for three half-pence or two-pence a piece, and occasionally for one penny. In severe winters, most of the other kinds of wild fowl which are at all migratory, also appear in great abundance, being stopped, for a time, in their progress towards milder climates, by the termination of the land, and congregated at the Landsend by the gradual tapering of the county to that extreme point. The coasts of Cornwall are frequented by the common sea birds, but these offer nothing in their history or habits that bears relation to the subject of this essay.

I am not sufficiently conversant with the class of insects, to be able to say whether this district affords any thing remarkable in that department of natural history; although it seems probable that the peculiarity of the climate is productive of some peculiarity in their habitudes. Bees are sufficiently plentiful, and derive ample stores of excellent honey from the numerous heaths of the district. The apple-bug is common here, and marked by its wonted devastation.