Cornwall is too far from the coalfields to be a manufacturing county on a large scale. There are, however, some few industries and manufactures carried on in Cornwall. The wonderful wireless telegraphy installation which Mr Marconi has established at Poldhu does not, perhaps, strictly speaking, come under this head, but it would be impossible to omit mention of it and of the great services it daily renders to vessels crossing the Atlantic. [Illustration: Poldhu Hotel and the Marconi Station] A considerable industry is in the making of casks, mainly for the exportation of pilchards. Woollen manufacture is carried on in a small way, also the construction of mining and other machinery. Shipbuilding occupies about 870 men. Some brick-making is done, but not to any considerable extent. The real employments supplying the vast majority of the people with bread are mining and quarrying, and agriculture and horticulture. =16. Minerals and Mining.= The authentic history of tin-mining in Cornwall begins with the year 1156. It is not mentioned in Domesday, and probably the Conqueror was as ignorant that tin was to be found there as were the Romans. In the year above given the tin mines are mentioned in the Pipe Rolls. In 1198 appears a letter from the Warden of the Stannaries to the Justiciar. In 1156 most of the tin was raised on Dartmoor, but the output now began to rise rapidly. In 1201 King John issued a charter to the Stannaries. In 1305 the Cornish Stannaries were in part dissociated from those in Devon. As already stated, in the beds of the valleys running down from the central ridge are deposits of tin, brought there from the lodes degraded by weather and flood in the central spinal ridge. The specific gravity of the tin ore is 6.8, and as the water rolled away from the heights, it deposited the tin that it had brought away with it. "The ores of tin," wrote Pryce in 1776, "are shode and stream ... scattered to some distance from the parent lode, and consisting of pebbly and smoothly angular stones of various sizes, from half an ounce to some pounds in weight. Stream tin is the same as shode but smaller in size and arenaceous." [Illustration: King Edward Mine, Camborne] Polwhele describes an early stream work disclosed about a century ago. The ore was of the purest kind and contained two-thirds metal. The pebbles from which the metal was extracted were in size from sand-like grains to that of a small egg. The depth of the primeval bed was 20 ft. This appeared to have been worked at a remote period, and before iron tools were employed, as large pickaxes of oak, holm, and box were found there. But archaeological research at the period when he wrote was carried on in such a haphazard way that we cannot trust the reports then made, and it is quite possible that the workings were comparatively late, possibly of Mediaeval times.