Observations on the Antiquities, Historical and Monumental, of the County of CornwallConsisting of Several Essays on the First Inhabitants, Druid Superstition, Customs and Remains of the Most Remote Antiquity in Britain and the British Isles, Exemplified and Proved by Monuments Now Extant in Cornwall and the Scilly Islands.

FIRST EDITION, W. Jackson, Oxford, 1754, Folio ( 360 x 250mm) Full polished calf, , xvi, 413 , errata to rear, 31 plates inc. 24 full page and engraved map.

The parish of Ludgvan were rich copper works, abounding with mineral and metallic fossils, of which Borlase made a collection, and thus was led to study somewhat minutely the natural history of Cornwall. In 1750, he was admitted a Fellow of the Royal Society; and in 1754 he published, at Oxford, his Antiquities of Cornwall (2nd ed., London, 1769). His next publication was Observations on the Ancient and Present State of the Islands of Scilly, and their Importance to the Trade of Great Britain (Oxford, 1756). In 1758 there appeared his Natural History of Cornwall which includes a chapter on the inhabitants and their native language (about one ninth of the whole).

He presented to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, a variety of fossils and antiquities, which he had described in his works, and received the thanks of the university and the degree of Doctor of Civil Law. Borlase was well acquainted with most of the leading literary men of the time, particularly with Alexander Pope, with whom he kept up a long correspondence, and for whose grotto at Twickenham he furnished the greater part of the fossils and minerals. He also sent collections of mineral and fossil specimens to Dr William Oliver and to a number of natural historians in Europe.