The circumstance most attractive of attention is the great sterility of this extensive district; some few contracted spots are indeed brought into cultivation; some parts afford summer pasturage for cattle, and others turf for fuel; but by far the greater portion of the whole lies entirely unproductive. And this character belongs to the whole insulated patch of granite more than ten miles in diameter; and the church of St. Breward is the only one to be found on this extensive surface of perhaps from forty to fifty thousand acres; while nine churches are to be found on the granite district of the Land’s End, where this substratum, departing from its usual qualities, gives fertility to the soil. The western extremity of this parish is fertile, resting on a peculiar kind of slate, which possesses geological interest. It may be seen at Combe, at Penrose, and at other places near the river Camel, and appears to be a variety of mica slate, being composed of granular felspar, interlaminated with mica. It contains beds of dark purple felspar rock, very similar to that which abounds in the mining district in the western part of the county. This micaceous slate gradually passes into a thick lamellar rock, which extensively disintegrates and becomes argillaceous, exactly resembling the stone quarried for building at Bodmin. [20] This is written in a different hand. BRIDGERULE. HALS. Bridgerule is situate in the hundred of Stratton, i. e. street or highway town. Now the part of the parish that is on the north side of the river Tamar, hath upon the north Launcells, west Marham Church, south Whitstone, east the Tamar river. The church stands on the Devonshire side, in the Halisworthy hundred, so that this rule or dominion of the Bridge extendeth itself into both counties, as to spirituals and temporals. In the Valor Beneficiarum, it is called Brige Rowell. Ecclesia de Bridge Rule, in Decanatu de Stratone, was taxed to the Pope’s annats, in 1294, at v_l._ iii_s._ 8_d._ Vicar ibidem nihil propter paupertatem. In Wolsey’s Inquisition it was taxed at 14_l._, and the parish was rated to the 4_s._ land-tax, in 1696, at 45_l._ 3_s._ At the time of the Domesday Roll, 20 W. Conq. this district was taxed under the name of Tacabere, which place is now the dwelling place of Mr. Samuel Gilbert. TONKIN. Mr. Risdon, in his History of Devon, part ii. p. 298, gives the true etymology of this place, in those words, “Bridge Renold, of the vulgar Bridge Rule, anciently Brige, by which name it is simply so called before the Norman Conqueror bestowed it upon Reginald[21] Adobed, and hence it took the adjunct of its owner.” The original of the primitive name is the bridge connecting the two parts across the Tamar. The manor of Tackbere, in Domesday called Tacabere, was one of those which the Conqueror bestowed on his half-brother the Earl of Morton. THE EDITOR.