THE INSULATION OF ST. MICHAEL’S MOUNT. 11 
and may not the Mount have always been that kind of half-island 
which it certainly was 2,000 years ago ?”* 
The spirit of the passages just quoted will, it is believed, be 
found in'the following queries :— 
I. If the tradition of the “hoar rock in the wood” had never 
existed, would geologists have ever entertained the idea that the 
Mount was once permanently a part of the mainland ? 
IJ. May not the Mount have always been that kind of half- 
island it is at present ? 
III. If at some early period it was severed from the mainland, 
_ have not geologists been obliged to leave it doubtful whether its 
insulation was due to the mere wasting of the sea-shore, or to a 
general subsidence of the country ? 
These queries I will now attempt to answer.t 
I. It is, of course, not improbable that the tradition spoken of 
first called attention to the geological causes to which the present 
geographical character of the Mount was due; nor, on the other 
hand, is it impossible that the tradition may be a somewhat rudely 
philosophical interpretation of observed geological facts. The 
earliest mention of the tradition was that by William of Worces- 
ter, and was made in 1478, according to Dr. Oliver.t Leland, the 
next author who noticed the Mount, writing about fifty years after, 
mentions the tradition of loss of area—without, however, alluding 
to any supposed change in the geographical condition of the semi- 
island—and states, that “In the bay betwyxt the Mont and Pensants 
be found neere the lowe Water Marke Rootes of Trees yn dyvers 
_Places as a token of the Grounde wasted ;’§ and thus furnishes, 
whether he understood it or not, good geological evidence of sub- 
sidence and an early continental sedition of the Mount. It cannot 
be denied that the tradition, as before hinted, may, perhaps, have 
* pp. 356-7. 
+ Awriter inthe Westminster Review, in a brief notice of Prof. Miiller’s 
papers on Cornwall, says, ‘“‘In the paper on the Insulation of St. Michael’s 
Mount, we should have been glad to have heard something more of the geo- 
logical evidence. We should also like to know what Mr. Pengelly . 
may have to say in answer from that point of view. . . . . Many of 
the questions which Mr. Max Miiller has raised can only be solved by the 
joint labours of the philologist and geologist.”— West. Rev., No. Ixxvii., 
January 1871, pp. 277-8. 
+ Monasticon. 
§ Itinerary, vol. vii., p. 118, 3 ed., Oxford, 1768. 
H 
