322 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



on the Helford River are the ruins of large Eoman encamp- 

 ments and towns. (3.) The ancient name of that country — 

 the Lizard Promontory — is a very pecuHar one — Meneage, 

 said to have been given to it by the Phoenicians, and to mean, 

 in their language, a low heath-like plant with which that 

 district abounds.* Certain it is that the name is not English, 

 nor Cornish, nor Norman-French, nor Saxon, and it is still 

 the common and legal name of the whole district ; while 

 several other names of places around the coast are also of 

 foreign origin — some are said to be Persian. (4.) The principal 

 tin, or " coinage," town in Cornwall, according to ancient 

 English laws and charters, was Hekton, which town is only 

 a short distance from the Cober River. 



I have said that Cornwall is rocky, and that granite is the 

 chief stone ; but there are many other stones and minerals to 

 be found. The granite which forms the great bulk of the 

 westernmost portion of the peninsula is succeeded by a series 

 of very curious stratified rocks, which are generally slaty, but 

 in certain bands assume the characters of a hornblende schist, 

 of serpentinous rock, or of singular alternations of folia, in 

 which garnet and its massive variety — allochroite, axinite, 

 chlorite, and other silicates — play a prominent part. It is 

 these variously coloured and angular, or even jagged, rocks 

 that lend so wild and picturesque a character to the whole 

 range of coast from Cape Cornwall to Pendeen Point, which 

 includes Botallack and Levant ; and again we meet these 

 same stratified and ambiguous masses when, after descending 

 through the deep shafts hewn out of the solid granite, we enter 

 the levels or galleries which have opened the way under the 

 western ocean ; and, at smaller or greater distances, according 

 to the depth, encounter them again, extending to the farthest 

 points, some half a mile from the shore, which have yet been 

 attained. 



The lodes or mineral veins themselves are notable for 

 their deviation from the directions which are usual elsewhere 

 in the west of England. They may be seen especially in 

 Levant and Botallack Mines, as well as in others near. They 

 have a tendency to strike north-west and south-east ; at the 

 same time they are intersected by cross-veins (the guides of 

 the miners). Some of these veins are narrow strings, but 

 running — a number of them — parallel, in a width of from 

 10 ft. to 20 ft., through a somewhat friable granite. The 

 ordinary lodes are from 1 ft. to 3 ft. in breadth, though in 

 Botallack and Levant they ha-ve been much larger. As 



' Erica vagans = Cornish heath, a highly ornamental little shrub, 

 often grown in gardens, and only found here in Britain ; is a native also 

 of the south of Europe. 



