1901-1902. ] A Winter in Cornwall. 351 
air at Falmouth and in the Morrab gardens at Penzance. 
As already said, large tracts of country are devoid of trees, 
being nothing but barren muirland covered with whin, 
bracken, and coarse grass, interspersed here and there with 
heather. Great boulders of granite stud these wastes, and 
when blackened by rain they give to the landscape a weird 
desolate appearance that would vie with some of our in- 
hospitable wildernesses, such as those of Lanarkshire or 
Rannoch. Add to this the circumstance of so many disused 
tin and copper mines, with their broken-down masonry and 
rotting machinery marring the prospect, and you have a 
picture in winter, or in bad weather, of utter God-forsaken- 
ness. Those muirs, however, are not without their redeeming 
features, as on sunshiny days, when the gorse is in full 
bloom and the brackens wave gracefully in the wind, a 
ramble over them, with the fine breeze blowing off the ocean, 
is not to be despised. What perhaps increases their at- 
tractiveness, under the above conditions, is the frequency 
of those extraordinary freaks of nature in the shape of 
enormous eruptions as it were of granitic formation that 
seem to spring out of the ground in most unexpected fashion. 
Illustrations of these may be cited in the famous Cheese- 
wring, Helmen Tor, and Roche Rocks; but as attention 
will be called to them under the heading of “ Antiquities, 
Churches, &c.,” they may be passed over at present. One 
thing that struck me most markedly was the supineness 
of the landed proprietors and tenantry in making little or 
no attempt to reclaim suitable portions of this waste ground. 
One explanation of this appears to be the fact that very 
little encouragement is given to tenants to trench and 
cultivate virgin soil, leases and compensation for improve- 
ments not being much in vogue, so that in reality the 
farmer has small inducement to add to his holding. It 
seems to me that were the Cornish proprietors to take 
an example from many of our Scottish lairds, wonders 
might be done. The land, when cleared of whins and 
rubbish, is good, the elevation above sea-level is not great, 
—not nearly the height on which corn grows in our less 
favoured country,—frost and snow are rare occurrences, 
and there is always a sufficiency of rain. If grain would 
