GEOLOGY 



f~ ~^HE county of Cornwall, jutting out to the western seas as a 

 long spur, forms part of a narrowing promontory that culmin- 

 ates in a claw, the extremities of which, known as the Land's 

 End and the Lizard, constitute respectively the most westerly 

 and southerly confines of Britain ; while the Scillies, yet further to the 

 south-west, stand out of the Atlantic as its islet prolongation. 



Its extensive seaboard, forming a line of bold cliffs facing the seas of 

 the Bristol and English Channels, and exposed to the full fury of the 

 Atlantic breakers, presents a coastal scenery unique amongst the English 

 counties ; while its extreme western walls, which overlook the Atlantic, 

 exhibit a beauty and grandeur that attract alike the lover of the pic- 

 turesque and the student of nature. While the problems opened up by 

 the study of our rock formations have possessed a fascination for the 

 scientific investigator from the earliest days of geological science, the 

 mineral products contained within their recesses claimed the attention 

 of observers at a period far more remote, and brought to our shores 

 the merchants of ancient Phoenicia. From the earliest times which his- 

 tory records up to the present day the extraction of tin has, with inter- 

 vals of cessation, formed a staple industry of the county. In later times, 

 when the stream deposits no longer yielded an adequate supply, the 

 extension of this industry to subterranean sources and the extraction of 

 other useful metals from these underground workings opened up a 

 wider field ; the growth of these industries brought in its train more 

 systematic observation which probably gave birth to the science of 

 geology as related to Cornwall. Those observations and the speculations 

 to which they gave rise have been continued to the present day, and the 

 county can boast of a long roll of Cornish geologists whose publications 

 have amassed a voluminous literature extending over two centuries. 



Their observations have been supplemented by scientific investiga- 

 tors attracted hither from outside the county and beyond the seas. Of 

 those able and enthusiastic pioneers, Sir Henry De la Beche, the founder 

 and first director of the Geological Survey, stands out pre-eminent, 

 not only from his masterly observations in the field, but from the con- 

 crete form in which he embodied them together with the scientific results 

 of the distinguished observers who preceded him. His classic memoir 

 constitutes a landmark in Cornish and even British geology. 1 Notwith- 



1 Report on the Geology of Cornwall, Devon and West Somerset [with Bibliography, 1602-1837], l8 39- 

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