Mr. William Phillips on the Veins of Cornwall. 135 



that it is as it were broken into small strings or branches. By a care- 

 ful examination of the nature and direction of these, the miner is 

 indeed sometimes enabled to find pretty readily that part of the load 

 which is on the other side of the cross vein, but he is often baffled. 

 Instances have occurred in which the load has, as it were, been 

 turned by the cross vein, so as to form what the miners term an 

 elbow. 



Not only does the substance, whatever it may be, of the cross 

 vein, almost uniformly pass through that of the metalliferous vein, 

 but it is often found so to interrupt its course, as, in the phrase of 

 the miner, to heave that part of the vein, east or west of it, a few 

 inches, or even many fathoms north or south : and as the metal- 

 liferous vein is frequently found to be poor on one side of the 

 cross vein, though rich on the other, its occurrence sometimes 

 not only baffles the skill of the most experienced miners, but also 

 causes much loss and vexation, as the ^annexed account of some 

 peculiarities in the veins of Tol Cam, Hucl Jewel, and Huel 

 Damsel mines, will shew. 



Though the cross courses, or north and south veins, are rarely 

 found to be metalliferous, or even to yield any of the ore of the 

 east and west veins through which they pass, a general exception 

 was found to exist in those of the great tin mine near St. Austle, 

 called Polgooth, in which, I believe, they universally produced 

 tin. Two of the cross veins in Herland and Drannack mines 

 yielded silver — one of them very sparingly, in the other it was 

 accompanied by other metallic substances : the quantity of silver 

 amounted in value to 8 or ^9000. Pryce says* that cobalt has 

 been found in veins of this description, that others have been 

 worked for lead, and ^ that the direction of antimonial veins is 



* Mill. Cornab. p. 50. + Ibid. p. 50. 



