‘e0 
ll 
interest in the Bibliotheca Cornubiensis, which under the unflagging 
industry of Mr. G. C. Boase and Mr. W. P. Courtney is making 
satisfactory progress; some years, however, must elapse before 
we can rejoice with them on the completion of the most valuable 
work, for the faithful execution of which they prove themselves 
so thoroughly qualified. 
Some thirty years ago the (LONDON) INSTITUTION OF CIVIL 
ENGINEERS offered premiums for Memoirs of Trevithick* and of 
Woolf ;+ but hitherto they have been unclaimed. It seems not 
yet to be generally known that before Woolf's mission to London 
he had been already employed by Trevithick in Cornwall. A 
biography of the great engineer—of whom a bust now stands 
before us—is, however, in preparation by his son, Mr. Francis 
Trevithick, of Penzance. I have been permitted to see many of 
the proof-sheets; but it would be unfair, both to the author and 
to my successor, if I were to forestal the important matter which 
is in store for us. 
I feel myself the faithful interpreter of your sentiments in 
saying that Miss Fox could have offered this INSTITUTION no pre- 
sent more acceptable than the bust of the honoured and venerable 
father of Science in Cornwall, with which she has this day 
favoured us. 
Mr. Burnard, by whom the busts of Mr. Fox and Mr. Tre- 
vithick were executed, himself presents the bust of Dr. Borlase 
which at length decorates our room. 
It has been recently announced { that the Irish fern Tricho- 
munes radicans was—as long ago as 1866—discovered by Mr. Fox, 
at Saint Knighton’s Kieve, a spot we examined with so much 
pleasure last year. ' 
Amongst other rare visitors during the late severe winter 
several wild swans—the survivors, probably, of a larger flight 
which had previously met an inhospitable reception on the moors 
near Roughtor—alighted in Marazion marsh about the beginning 
of January. One of them was soon killed, but two others—re- 
gardless alike of a well-frequented railway station within rifle- 
range, and of the visitors their presence attracted—remained with 
us for three months. On the approach of spring and the appear- 
ance of the water-lilies, however, they left us. 
+ “Richard Trevithick was born [at Illogan] on the 13th of April 1771, 
* * * and died at Dartford, in Kent, on the 22nd of September 1832.” 
Epmuonps, Land’s-end District, pp. 257, 266. 
+ Arthur Woolf was baptized at Camborne 4th November 1766 (Cam- 
borne Parish Register), ‘‘died in Guernsey, 16th October 1837.” Mr. Joun 
Hocxine, C.E., MS. Pouz, Treatise on the Cornish Pumping Engine, p. 53. 
t Dymond, Nature, iv., p. 8. 
