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been afforded by the establishment in Cornwall, of a school for the 
instruction in Sciences and Arts connected with Minine, of young 
men who are to be engaged in conducting the important subterra- 
nean operations of that county. The want of such a school had 
been pointed out by Mr. John Taylor, in his Prospectus of a School 
of Mines in Cornwall, February 7, 1825, and in his Records of 
Mining, published in 1829. It has at length been instituted chiefly 
through the exertions and at the expense of Sir Charles Lemon. 
This incipient school, and the University of Durham, form almost 
solitary examples in England, of such scientific establishments as are 
nearly universal in the mining districts of the Continent. The 
experiment has begun in Cornwall with Courses of Lectures in - 
Mathematics, Mechanics, Chemistry, and Mineralogy, by three pro- 
fessors ; and a course of instruction, by a practical surveyor, in Al- 
gebra, Drawing, and the Use of instruments: and during the next 
year, still further additions are contemplated. 
POLYTECHNIC SOCIETY OF CORNWALL. 
To the zealous exertions of Sir Charles Lemon, and of many 
intelligent and active individuals at Falmouth, the county of Corn- 
wall is also indebted for the establishment of a Polytechnic Society, 
which, during the few years of its existence, has been attended 
with extraordinary success. One of its chief objects is to encou- 
rage, by rewards, the invention and improvement of machinery, of 
which so large an amount is essential to the working of the mines. 
Another object is to collect materials for expressing the quantity and 
value of the mineral and other produce of the county ; and to con- 
struct tables indicating the diminished longevity, and diseases, 
which, in a peculiar degree, affect the Cornish miners, and do not 
prevail amongst those employed in Collieries. It appears, froin a 
paper published in the Sixth Annual Report of this Society, (1839, ) 
that the average duration of a miner’s life is less, by many years, 
than that of the agricultural labourer in the same district; the ap- 
parent causes of this frightful evil being the inevitably imperfect 
ventilation of many of the veins or lodes in which the miner works ; 
and, partly, the extreme fatigue of ascending from great depths by 
ladders, instead of being lifted by machinery, as the workmen are 
