Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 2.djvu/93

 among those who have never left the district. I was informed by some old residents that, during a period of thirty years, a piece of water in the vicinity of Penzance was in a fit condition for skating only four times, viz. in 1788, 1794, 1814, and 1819. And this will not appear surprising when we reflect that during the thirteen years from 1807 to 1820, the thermometer was only 37 times below the freezing point.

Thunder.─Thunder appears to be of rarer occurrence in this district than in most others in the Kingdom. The historians of Cornwall, it is true, like all topographical writers, have occasion to record some severe thunder-storms which committed considerable damage; but these seem recorded rather from their calamitous events, memorable in a confined neighbourhood, than from any thing uncommon in their severity. From Mr. Giddy, sen.'s tables, it appears that the mean number of days on which thunder has been heard, annually, is only two and a half, and the greatest number of days in any one year is only seven. It also appears that the three winter months, January, February and March, are those in which thunder is most frequent; a circumstance, I apprehend, which is contrary to the state of the fact in most temperate countries, summer being the season when it most frequently occurs.

Winds.─"Touching the temperature of Cornwall," says Carew, "the air thereof is cleansed as with bellows, by the billows and flowing and ebbing of the sea, and there through becometh pure and subtle, and by consequence healthful." "This, notwithstanding," (he says in another place,) "the