THE CLIMATE OF WEST CORNWAIiL. 47 



Conclusion. The climate of West Cornwall may be summed 

 up generally as equable, moist, balmy and bright, rivalling that 

 of the South of France in geniality and equability, as evidenced 

 by the wealth of exotic flora with which many of the private 

 gardens in the County abound, and to which public attention 

 has from time to time been called through various channels. 



In the Annual Report of the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic 

 Society for 1881 may be found an interesting article by Mr. 

 Ernest BuUmore, entitled "Moral Notes of the winter of 1880-81," 

 in which he enumerates about 150 specimens of exotics which 

 he saw flowering in the open on 4th January, 1881, in the 

 neighbourhood of Falmouth. He also gives a list of a score of 

 plants killed or injured at Kew, and uninjured at Falmouth 

 during the winter, a period of exceptional cold. Mr. Howard 

 Fox also gives a list of 100 wild flowers, flowering in the same 

 neighbourhood, many of them profusely in December^ 1880, and 

 January, 1881. 



In the same volume, Mr. "Wilson L. Fox publishes highly 

 valuable Tables of Comparative temperatures at various British 

 Stations for the period of extreme cold in January, 1881, in 

 which he shows that the thermometer fell below freezing point 

 on fewer occasions in the Cornish centres than anywhere else in 

 the kingdom. Subsequent reports of the Polytechnic Society 

 contain several tables compiled by Mr. W. L. Fox, showing the 

 winter temperatures of West Cornwall stations compared with 

 those of several popular British and Continental Winter Health 

 Resorts, by which it may be seen that Cornwall holds a very 

 favourable comparative position. 



Well might the editor of "Sunny Corners of Homeland" 

 say, writing of Cornwall in February last — " Falmouth, 8^ hours 

 from London, has a mean winter temperature only one degree 

 less than Montpellier and Florence ; at St. Ives the mean is 

 only four degrees less than Rome, while frosts are rare, and 

 snow almost unknown. Penzance, too, is favoured with a 

 climate equal to that of Falmouth, while its near neighbour, 

 Marazion, is completely sheltered from east winds, and is said to 

 possess the mildest climate in England. Of the Scilly Islands 

 little more need be said, than that the isothermal line of Glibraltar 

 passes through them, and that the mean winter temperature is 

 46*7 degrees. 



