Report on the geology of Cornwall, Devon and West Somerset / by Henry T. De La Beche, F.R.S., &c., director of the Ordnance geological survey. Pub. by order of the Lords commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury.

  • Henry De la Beche
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the geology of Cornwall, Devon and West Somerset / by Henry T. De La Beche, F.R.S., &c., director of the Ordnance geological survey. Pub. by order of the Lords commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    656/714 (page 618)
    The amount of ore raised we were unable to ascertain, but it must have amounted to several thousand tons within the last foul oi five years. The iron-ore near Ilsington (on the east oi Dart- moor) was at one time raised in considerable quantities. Mag^ netic iron-ore, of good quality, has been worked near South Brent, Devon, and at Treluswell, near Penryn, Cornwall. There can be little doubt that a large supply of good hematite iron-ore could be readily obtained from the district under consideration, if the necessary demand existed. Independently of the arsenic sublimed from roasting the ores mixed with arsenical pyrites at the mines and roastmg-houses, works are established near Perran Arworthall, for the purpose of obtaining the arsenic of commerce directly from arsenical pyrites (42.88 arsenic, 36.04 iron, and 21.08 sulphur, according to Stromeyer), and many tons are annually exported. Plumbago, of good quality, has been found in small nodules in an elvan neai Deveron (Restronget Creek), but hitherto not in any quantity to be profitably employed.t We have seen (p. 527) that, by ancient charters, the tinners in the duchy of Cornwall were exempt from all other jurisdiction than that of the stannary courts, except in cases affecting land, life, and limb; and that no new laws affecting the tinners could be enacted by the Duke and his council, without the consent of twenty-four stannators, such stannators for Cornwall being returned from its four divisions. The meeting of these stannators was termed a parliament, and when they assembled they chose a speaker. These parliaments have, from timetotime, been assem- bled by the Lord Warden, in order to revise old or to enact new laws, as occasion may have arisen. It appears that the last Cornish stannary parliament was held at Truro in 1/52, and. was continued by adjournments to the 11th oi September, 1/53.J] Crokern Tor, on Dartmoor, was, from ancient times, the place where the stannary parliaments of Devon were held; and it is stated by Lysons, in 1822, that, within the memory ot man, the commission was opened and the jurors sworn at this wild spot; * j)r. Edward Cotton sent a piece of this ore, weighing 601bs., to the Royal Society inlGG7, which moved a needle placed at the distance of nine feet. h The only specimen we have seen was in the cabinet oi Mr. Robert Were I ox, of Falmouth, who obtained it from the locality mentioned above. + Lysons, Magna Britannia, Cornwall, p. ix.