Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 2.djvu/143

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arts, we ought to rate the intellectual capacity of the inhabitants of the Landsend very high. The two last Presidents of the Royal Society, Sir Humphry Davy and Davies Gilbert, Esq. were born within five miles of each other, in this district; and many other individuals might be named, both of the past and present times, sprung from different classes of the community, whose talents have illustrated their native Penwith. It is a circumstance well worthy of remark, how much the intellectual capacity, or rather the intellectual development of the people, varies in the different classes. Generally speaking the common peasantry or agricultural labourers, are as heavy, dull, and unintellectual, as in any part of England, while the miners, the common labouring miners, are singularly acute and intelligent. The causes of this difference are sufficiently obvious, and lie in the nature of the avocations of the respective parties. The peasant, from youth to age, plods round the same dull circumscribed circle of occupation; and his business being fully learnt in early life, makes no great demand on the maturer powers of succeeding years; while the miner, with labours fraught with all the interest of variety, novelty and speculation, and requiring the constant exercise of his judgment to decide on doubtful points, lives in a constant state of intellectual training. The consequence is as above described.


PART II.─STATISTICAL AND MEDICAL.


CHAP. I.─STATISTICAL HISTORY OF THE INHABITANTS.

Physical character of the People.─The Cornish, like the Welsh and Scotch, and I believe justly, lay