SECT. XIV. 
Steatites. 
66 NATURAL HISTORY 
gentleman having made a walk, and laid this clay as a cement, 
found the grafs to grow moft plentifully : it might prove perhaps, 
upon farther tryal, a marie, as proper for corn as grafs ; but the 
ufefulnefs of marie is little known in Cornwall. 
There is a white fteatites*, in the parifh of Guenap, of a more 
indurated Earth than the former : but the moft curious of all our 
clays in Cornwall, is the fleatites near the Lizherd, generally called 
the Soap-rock. As the fituation of this curious fofiii, and its poft- 
tion in the Earth, has been wholly miftaken °, I fhall be the more 
particular as to the place and other circumftances. The firft place 
where it appears, is at Kynans Cove, one mile and half North- 
Weft of the Lizherd : here is very little of the fteatites, and fo far 
are the cliffs from being compofed of it, that it was with difficulty 
we found any ; but ’tis rare to find a place where a Naturalift would 
have been more delighted, if he had found none. The way down 
from the hill is extremely rough and narrow, there being but a path 
of few inches tread, made by the horfes which carry fand ; from 
this path you enter a moft lonely cove, the fand of which is of a 
mixed colour, partly light-blue, partly glittering. Thefe fands are 
difperfed in many turning and winding paflages among rocks and 
vaft maffes of cliff - , which the fea has unfooted and feparated from 
the high-lands adjoining. The fandy walks lead to many grotts, 
which are polifhed too often by the tides to afford any cavernous 
plants ; but at the foot of the rocks, many bafons or baths of cry- 
ftal water are formed in the fands by the eddy of the waves. There 
is fprinkled in fome places a ffnooth un&uous incruftation, much like 
bees-wax to the eye and touch, of which the crevices in the rocks 
(generally no wider than the twentieth of an inch) are full. This 
incruftation does not appear to be any exfudation through the pores 
of the rock, but rather wafhed out of the crevices, and returned 
by the waves, till it flicks faft, and forms a kind of enamel upon the 
fides of the rocks. On the Eaftern fide of this cove, the rocks in general 
are more gritty and crumbling, and between them fome few and 
fmall veins of the white and red marbled clay, one fort of that 
which we call Soap- rock. But the pureft and greateft plenty of the 
fteatites is about a mile farther to the North, where defeending into 
a narrow valley, about 200 paces from the top of the hill, we found, 
on our left-hand, a ft raw-coloured, foft, greaiy clay, mixed with 
brown-red, laid bare by the tumbling-down of the green fod which 
covered it. This courfe of clay was about a yard thick, eafily cut 
* Steatites is a clay called fo from its refem- ward’s Cat. vol. I. page 6 . “ The cliff of the 
blance to tallow ; in Greek, teko. “ Lizard-point is almoft wholly compofed of it, 
0 “ A confiderable part of the cliff, near the cc and the adjacent little iflands abound with it.” 
<c Lizard-point, confifts of this earth.” Wood- Hill’s Hift. of Follils, page 22. 
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