Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 2.djvu/73

 height of the Hundred of Penwith above the level of the sea, is probably between 400 and 500 feet, and its highest hills certainly do not exceed 1000 feet.

Thus situated and characterised, the Hundred of Penwith certainly possesses many striking natural peculiarities, as compared with most other districts in Great Britain. Its bold and narrow Promontory projected, as it were, into the Atlantic Ocean, midway between the coasts of France and Ireland, more than a hundred miles from the main body of England, and a still greater distance from the two former Kingdoms,─it is, at the same time, removed from the influence of many causes common to the rest of the island, and subjected to others peculiar to itself. In addition to its natural peculiarities of climate, &c. this district is remarkable for containing a large number of miners, a class of men whose whole habits and mode of life are extremely unlike those of a mere agricultural or manufacturing population. These two circumstances, together with the facility of isolating the district so as to compare the results of our investigations with those afforded by other situations, seem to render its Medical Topography a subject of more than usual interest.

Physiognomy.─As has been already observed, the whole of this district possesses a hilly character, and, with the exception of a few very small strips of low coast, is considerably elevated above the sea. Generally speaking the surface is throughout very uneven, being broken in many places by a succession of hills and vallies, yet, upon the whole, perhaps, rather possessing the character of a ridge of low hills, sloping on all sides to the sea, than of a continuous