DESCRIPTIVE. 13 
unwritten Norman /afozs, full of interest to the philologist and the 
student of the early French language; but the idea had to be 
abandoned, as I found it practically impossible to compress within 
the necessary limits anything lhke an intelligible outline of its 
peculiarities of construction, idiom, and pronunciation. But one 
point may be mentioned. There are in the Guernsey dialect peculiar 
vowel-sounds, accents, and combinations of consonants, which have 
no exact parallel in either English or French, and therefore cannot 
possibly be phonetically expressed in writing without constructing 
some special system of notation. Asa matter of fact, though many 
attempts have been made, no one has yet succeeded in writing the 
patois in such a way that a total stranger may read it off and 
pronounce it correctly. 
At the commencement of the nineteenth century the population 
of Guernsey did not amount to 20,000; now it must have nearly 
doubled, as the census of 1891 gave the number of inhabitants as 
35,218. Even that figure gives the very high average of over 1400 
persons to the square mile, or more than treble that of England and 
Wales. 
The exportation of granite has for very many years contributed 
in a large measure to the prosperity of the island, and millions of 
tons have found their way to nearly all parts of the kingdom. The 
stone is of excellent quality and very durable, and it is shipped off 
either in large rough blocks, as hewn from the quarry, or dressed 
into cubes for street-paving and building purposes. Large quantities 
are also exported after being broken up into small pieces suitable for 
macadamising roads, and it is said no stone in the world is equal to 
it for that purpose. Thirty years ago the quantity of granite 
exported averaged about 200,000 tons per annum; in 1897 it 
amounted to over 291,000 tons, and in 1898 the quuntity shipped 
reached the unprecedented total of 300,639 tons. 
But during the last twenty years the fruit-growing industry has 
advanced by such leaps and bounds that it has to a great extent 
eclipsed the stone trade. At the present day there are certainly 
scores, if not hundreds, vf mzles of greenhouses in the island, fitted 
up with all the very latest appliances and modern improvements, 
employing thousands of skilled workmen, and producing all through 
the year the finest fruit, vegetables, and flowers. Every week-day 
-during the spring and summer months large shiploads of vegetable 
‘produce leave Guernsey for the English markets, as many as 28,000 
baskets and crates having been dispatched in a single day. The 
Official returns show that the export of this kind of produce is at 
present more than six times as large as it was about a dozen years 
ago. The quantity for the year 1899 surpassed all previous records, 
and attained the enormous total of 1,639,496 packages, and during 
the three months ending June 3oth, 1900, the number of packages 
of Guernsey produce exported, viz., fruit, flowers, vegetables, bulbs, 
