The Scillonians are a robust and healthy people, and were it not for the facility with which they obtain spirits, they would attain a very advanced age. It is a common saying amongst them, and is no doubt intended to express how highly favourable the spot is to longevity, although it obviously admits of another construction, that "_for one man who dies a natural death_, _nine are drowned_." It has been remarked that a deformed person is not to be found in the islands; but we apprehend that this fact requires an explanation very different from that which is usually assigned; it cannot be received as any test of the salubrity of the spot, or of the superior healthiness of the race; the fact is simply this, that exposure to inclement weather, want of proper food, and those various privations which necessarily increase as we recede from the luxuries of civilization, kill, during infancy, those feeble subjects which might, otherwise, have become deformed during the progress of their growth. It is for the same reason that we so frequently observe the troops of barbarous countries composed of the most athletic individuals, for the hardship of their service weeds out the feeble and invalid. We have already alluded to the tenacity with which the Cornishman clings to his native soil, but the attachment of the Scillonian, if possible, is still stronger to his desolate rock. What a striking contrast does this form with the roving inhabitant of an alluvial country, where every object, it might be presumed, was calculated to excite and sustain the strongest attachment; but this principle of Nature is wise and universal,--the plant is easily loosened from a generous soil, but with what difficulty is the lichen torn from its rock.