DAYS STOLEN FOR SPORT 125 



Kynance and to bullion Cove and to the Lizard, 

 where a day is all too short to visit the quarries in 

 the high, overhanging cliffs from which the 'Serpen- 

 tine' is taken, and the many other points of interest. 

 The Spanish names above the sheds wherein the 

 'Serpentine' is turned and polished, and the raven 

 hair and swarthy faces met with there, are very striking, 

 but for really pretty Spanish faces St Ives is the most 

 famous Cornish town. The beauty of its ladies was 

 the excuse of the polygamist of St Ives for ha\ang 

 seven wives. This excuse loses nothing of its strange- 

 ness if put side by side with that of the Ambassador 

 of Siam who, in answer to the question why he had 

 so many, replied, '^^'ere the ladies of Siam as 

 beautiful as your ladyship, I could well be content 

 with one.' 



The boat at our command enabled us to avail 

 ourselves of days when a sail along the coast or up the 

 Helford River was a pleasant change. Sometimes the 

 sail, with the whole party on board, was to Faknouth, 

 where the ladies desired to do shopping and the 

 children to spend their weekly income in a larger 

 market than that afforded by St Keveme. 



It is also a pleasant place to be lazy in, and dawdle 

 an hour or so away amidst a wealth of fern bracken 

 and wild bloom, while the more industrious of the 

 party are gathering the ripe blackberries or following 

 their bent as directed by their hobbies. Our entomo- 

 logist found a happy hunting-ground, and I was 

 honoured by an invitation from him to be a witness of 

 an 'Assembly.' I was told I should see male moths 

 come from great distances to it, their inducement 

 being the hope of seeing a newiy emerged female in all 

 her glory. The newly-born insect was put in a woven 

 cotton cage and hung on a bush in the middle of a field 

 on a hill-side, down which a slight breeze was blowing 

 towards a coppice in a lower distant comer. \\'hen 

 this had been done, and no visible results followed 



