Nor let the intelligent tourist despair of amusement, for he will find much to interest, much to delight him. There is not perhaps a district in Great Britain which presents greater attractions to the mineralogist or geologist; and there is certainly not one which, in so small a compass, has produced so many species of earthy and metallic minerals, or which displays so many geological varieties. At the same time the antiquarian may here occupy himself with the examination of the rude relics of antiquity, which lie scattered on all sides--nothing is more pleasing than that sacred enthusiasm which is kindled in the mind by the contemplation of the faded monuments of past ages, and surely no spot was ever more congenial to such sensations. But to return from the digression. THE CLIMATE of Mount's Bay is the circumstance which has principally contributed to its celebrity, and is that which renders its shores so beneficial to invalids. Its seasons have been aptly compared to the neap tides, which neither ebb nor flow with energy; for, notwithstanding its southern latitude, the summer is never sultry, while the rigour of winter is so ameliorated, that thick ice[1] is rarely seen; frost, if it occurs, is but of a few hours duration; and the snow storms which, coming from the north and east, bury the fields of every other part of England, are generally exhausted before they reach this favoured spot, or their last sprinkling is dissolved by the warm breezes which play around its shores. The records lately collated and published by Dr. Forbes, from the meteorological journals of Messrs. Giddy, eminent surgeons at Penzance, afford abundant proof that this neighbourhood enjoys a mean summer temperature _under_, and a mean winter temperature greatly _above_, the mean of places similarly situated as to latitude, but differing in the latter being placed at a distance from the sea; for the mass of water held in the vast basin of the ocean preserves a far more even temperature than the atmosphere, and is constantly at work to maintain some degree of equilibrium in the warmth of the air; so that in the summer it carries off a portion of the caloric from it, while in the winter it restores a part of that which it contains.[2]