186 



MEMORIALS OF RAY : 



Saturday, June the 28th, we travelled on to Truro, 

 sixteen miles. By the v^^ay we passed St. Columb,* an 

 old town. The churches in Cornwall, for the most part, 

 have good tower-steeples of free-stone ; the churches are 

 made up of three rows or ridges of building, of an equal 

 height, and sometimes length too, and covered with slate. 

 Near St. Columb, by the way side, are found in several 

 places, Euphrasia pratensis lutea, C. B.-\ Between St. 

 Columb and St. Michael (and in several other places), a 

 plant, which we guess to be Alsine palmtris minor serpilli 

 folia. \ It hath long, weak trailing branches ; the stalk 

 is round and red, the leaves of a pale green, growing by 

 pairs, the flowers grow verticillatim about the stalk, at 

 every joint ; each particular flower is compounded of five, 

 as it were tubuli, in figure like the seed-vessel of lark- 

 spur ; it grows in watery places near springs. Nothing 

 more common than Osmunda regalis about springs and 

 rivulets in this country. Camomile \Anthemis nohilisy 

 Linn.] grows in such plenty along the way sides, that 

 one may scent it as one rides. Truro is a pretty town, 

 the second in Cornwall, and is governed by a mayor and 

 four aldermen, with their four assistants ; the lord 

 Roberts hath an house there, but it is a small one ; the 

 church is handsome and large, and hath two monuments 

 in it, one of them of the three children of the Michells, 



* Mr. Ray, in the year 1667, took another tour to the Land's-end, and 

 from thence went to St. Columb. " By the way (saith he) at a place called 

 Baldieu, we saw a tin mine. The load or vein, for the most part, runs east 

 and west, and deepens north. The load is not a vein, but a floor or bed. 

 The load, both above and beneath, is covered with a crust or stony sub- 

 stance, which hath no tin in it, which they call Country, the uppermost they 

 call the North Country, the nethermost South Country. In the mine they 

 sometimes find spar, which is nothing but a flour ; some white and hexan- 

 gular in diamonds. St. Columb is one of the best parsonages in Cornwall, 

 the yearly value between 300 and 400 pounds." 



f This is the ^. lutea. Linn. ; a plant not found in England, and " there- 

 fore not included in Ray's * Synopsis.* It is probable that the Bartsia 

 visosa, Trixago viscosa, R. of Bab. Man. {U. major lutea latifolia palmtris, 

 Ray,) is the plant referred to in this place. — C. C. B. 



X I believe that the Illecebrum verticillatum, Linn., is intended by this 

 name, which is not to be found in Ray's ' Synopsis,' where the Illecebrum is 

 called Polygonum >ierpillifolium verticillatum. — C. C. B. 



