XIV 



Traditions, Tales, and Folk Lore fall, I believe, rather beyond 

 the limits prescribed to us ; nevertheless, as the comnaencement 

 and progress of Mr. Bottrell's entertaining volume have been 

 recorded in our pages,* I hope I do not greatly transgress by 

 mentioning its publication in the present year, and that its success 

 has induced Mr. Bottrell to commence a second series. 



Notices and descriptions of the scenery, natural productions, 

 antiquities, and industries of Cornwall, which may have appeared 

 in various magazines and newspapers, will be found recorded in 

 the Chronological Memoranda prepared for us with such skill and 

 perspicuity by Mr. Chorley at the end of every year. 



The unstable condition of the Cheesewring having become an 

 object of remark in the newspapers, the Chief Inspector of Duchy 

 Mines, and his assistants, received on the ground a sub-committee 

 of your ofiicers. It appears, from their Report, that a quarry, 

 long since worked on the north-east slope of the hill, has, of late, 

 been materially enlarged ; that enormous charges of gunpowder 

 are occasionally fired within short distances of the Cheesewring ; 

 and that blocks of granite, placed to prop its overhanging slabs, 

 have materially interfered with their picturesque appearance. A 

 representation, embodying this Eeport, was placed by your Council 

 in the hands of Mr. Warington Wilkinson Smyth, F.R.S., with a 

 request that he would submit it to the proper officers of the 

 Duchy ; and we learn that they are about to take it into consider- 

 ation. 



Ages ago many parts of the moor were furrowed by still 

 earlier open-works ; and, during the last half-century many profit- 

 able mines, worked within short distances, brought a large and an 

 industrious population into the neighbourhood. For the walls of 

 cottages and the fences of paddocks, all stones — whatever their 

 picturesque or traditional character, t — whether on Duchy, or on 

 other private, property — even portions of (the Hurlers X) ancient 

 rock circles, if suitable for the mason and the hedger, have been 

 broken and carried off. As this indiscriminate havoc has con- 

 tinued for time beyond memory, the moor has gradually lost that 



« Journal of the Royal Institution of Cormcall, Vol. I (No. IV), pp. 92 — 94 ; 

 Vol. Ill (No. IX), pp. 70, 71, 73; (No. X), pp. 133, 140. 



•j- The cap-stone of a cromlech, at Merivale-bridge, on Dartmoor, had for 

 some time been dismounted ; but during the past summer it Avas split in two, 

 and a part of it was removed by a stone-mason. 



Bate, Western Morning News, 29th June, 1869. 



+ Borlase, Antiquities of Cornwall, p. 199, PL XVII, Fig. 6. 



