Closed on green Erin's daughter. [10] The Land's End in Cornwall. [11] The granite of Cornwall is generally found incumbent on primitive _schistus_. This is the case in many of the cliffs at the Land's End. The upper stratum is composed of granite, the lower with the surrounding rocks of _schistus_. D. [12] The Islands of Scilly. [13] A rock near the Land's End, called the 'Irish Lady.' [14] The Irish Lady was shipwrecked at the Land's End, about the time of the massacre of the Irish Protestants by the Catholics, in the reign of Charles the First. That the Genius who presided over the destinies of Davy should have torn him from these flowery regions of Fancy, and condemned him to labour in the dusky caverns of the mineral kingdom, has furnished a fruitful theme of lamentation to the band of Poets, and to those who prefer the amusements to the profits of life, and who cherish the hallucinations of the imagination rather than the truths of science. If, however, we regret that Davy's Muse, like Proserpine, should have been thus violently seized, and carried off to the lower regions, as she was weaving her native wild flowers into a garland, we may console ourselves in knowing that, like the daughter of Ceres, she also obtained the privilege of occasionally revisiting her native bowers; for it will appear in the course of these memoirs, that in the intervals of more abstruse studies, Davy not unfrequently amused himself with poetical composition. But, in sober truth, is it possible that any reasonable being can regret the course in which he has been impelled? A great poetic Genius has said, "If Davy had not been the first Chemist, he would have been the first Poet of his age." Upon this question I do not feel myself a competent judge: but where is the modern Esau who would exchange his Bakerian Lecture for a poem, though it should equal in design and execution the PARADISE LOST? As far as can be ascertained, one of the first original experiments in Chemistry performed by him at Penzance, was for the purpose of discovering the quality of the air contained in the bladders of sea-weed, in order to obtain results in support of a favourite theory of light; and to ascertain whether, as land vegetables are the renovators of the atmosphere of land-animals, sea-vegetables might not be the preservers of the equilibrium of the atmosphere of the ocean. From these experiments he concluded, that the different orders of the marine _Cryptogamia_ were capable of decomposing water, when assisted by the attraction of light for oxygen. His instruments, however, were of the rudest description, manufactured by himself out of the motley materials which chance threw in his way; the pots and pans of the kitchen, and even the more sacred vessels and professional instruments of the surgery, were without the least hesitation or remorse put in requisition.