Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 2.djvu/71



With all its imperfections, however, I by no means consider the following Essay as useless; and even if it possessed less value than I myself attach to it, I would much rather risk my credit by publishing it, than deprive my fellow-members of the benefit which they may reap from my example. My plan I believe to be good; and I cannot deny myself the justice of having prosecuted my inquiries with zeal, so long as I remained amid the subjects of them.

In order to account for the distant date of most of the statistical details contained in the Memoir, I wish further to state that it is twelve years since I left Cornwall, and that almost all the materials of which it is composed, were collected during my residence there. Some few particulars, indeed, I owe to a more recent communication with my Cornish friends, a circumstance which will explain the seeming incongruity of the dates in some parts of the paper.

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PART I.─HISTORICAL AND ECONOMICAL.

CHAP. I.─OF THE NATURAL AND PHYSICAL HISTORY OF THE DISTRICT.

Geographical Position.─The counties of Devon and Cornwall constitute a large promontory or imperfect peninsula, washed by the British and Bristol Channels, which projects westward into the Atlantic considerably beyond the main body of the Island of Great Britain. As the western border of Devonshire is nearly in the same parellel with the shores of Wales, nearly the whole of Cornwall, consequently, is to the westward of the rest of England. The