Abstract
IN its several ways the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society continues to stimulate interest in the traditions and archaeology of the county as well as in science. Lectures are given, prizes for essays awarded, excursions are made and much is done for meteorology by the maintenance of the Falmouth Observatory and the support of the Cornwall Rainfall Association. All these matters are referred to in the one hundred and fifth annual report, recently issued, which is accompanied by some of the original contributions to the Society. The Society was founded when the Cornish metalliferous mines were in full swing, and in a paper entitled “The Ancient Mining Districts of Cornwall” Mr. F. J. Stephens gives a review of the score or more of mines which existed within two miles of the coastline, in the parishes of Illogan, St. Agnes and Perranzabuloe. Another contribution, but in lighter vein, is an account of the opening of the railway to Falmouth in 1863, from which it was hoped the district would gam much by the re-opening of the port of Falmouth as a terminus for steamship lines, while in yet another Mr. E. Chirgwin treats of the dialect of Cornwall. As in other parts of Great Britain, the dialect “is speeding from the presence of compulsory instruction, the cinema, the motor coach, the daily paper and the thousands of visitors” who flock to the district. As usual, Mr. W. T. Hooper gives a series of valuable meteorological notes, in which he shows that those discontented because perpetual sunshine is not to be enjoyed at Falmouth, have little about which to complain.
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Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society. Nature 143, 675 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/143675a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/143675a0