The vicarage house is very pleasantly situated in a valley rising from the town, and the whole glebe received great improvements from the late vicar, Doctor Lyne, a gentleman of much respectability, but most distinguished by his singularities; among other fancies, he entertained such strong apprehensions and fear of contagion, as not to touch even gold coin till it had been flung into water; but this caution seems to have been compensated by a subsequent attachment to the precious metal, as several thousand pounds in specie were found in his house. A market is held in Mevagissey on Saturdays. This parish measures 1222 statute acres. Annual value of the Real Property, as £. _s._ _d._ returned to Parliament in 1815 4,589 0 0 Poor Rate in 1831 1,383 6 0 Population, { in 1801, | in 1811, | in 1821, | in 1831, { 2052 | 2225 | 2450 | 2169 giving an increase of not quite 6 per cent. in 30 years. But there appears an extraordinary decrease of population in the last ten years. In twenty years the increase was 19½ per cent. very nearly, which, continued for thirty years, would have given 30½ per cent. Present Vicar, the Rev. John Arscott, presented in 1824 by the Earl of Mount Edgcumbe. THE GEOLOGY, BY DR. BOASE. The geological structure of this parish is the same as those of the adjacent parishes St. Eve and Gorran. ST. MEWAN. HALS. St. Mewan rectory is situate in the hundred of Powder, and hath upon the north St. Stephen’s and Roach, east St. Austell, south Mevagissey, and south-west Creed. In the Domesday Book this district was taxed either under the jurisdiction of Branell, Tybesta, Towington, or Refishoe, perhaps now Lefisick. In the Inquisition of the Bishops of Lincoln and Winchester into the value of Cornish Benefices, 1294, Ecclesia de St. Mewany in decanatu de Powdre, was rated 40_s._; in Wolsey’s Inquisition, 1521, £10. The patronage in Hamley, formerly in the prior of Tywardreth, who endowed it; the incumbent Mitchell; and the parish rated to the 4_s._ per pound Land Tax, 1696, temp. William III. £91. 6_s._ 4_d._ Pol-godh, Pol-goth, is in this parish. Out of which mine hath been taken up, in less than forty years’ space, about five hundred thousand pounds weight of tin; to the great enriching the labourers, adventurers, bond-owners, and lords of the fee or soil; the same lying for the most part in coarse wastrell ground, therefore boundable, in a valley between two lofty hills. Sir John Arundell, of Lanherne, knight, one of the lords of the soil, did for about twenty years space receive alone one thousand pounds per annum free to his part, as the fifth dish of black tin there made, and other lords proportionable quantities of tin or money, as interested in the lands thereof.