58 



poem, on the Wrekin, was read, amidst much laughter, by the 

 Eev. Mr. Cobbold, and a short paper by Mr. Dickenson, Presi- 

 dent of the " Severn Yalley Field Club." 



It was time now to proceed to meet the carriages which 

 were to convey the party to Uriconium. Passing over the fine- 

 grained Eed Syenite of Primrose Hill, a rapid descent brought 

 them to Longwood, where the can-iages were in waiting, and 

 in due course they were deposited at Uriconium, a British 

 Pompeii, buried for 1,400 years in the ruins of its own confla- 

 gration, for by fire it undoubtedly perished, and that so utterly 

 and completely, that with the exception of a grim fragment of 

 wall, out of which the tooth of time has bitten huge mouthfuls, 

 no external vestige remains to mark the site of a city which 

 once boasted a circumference of three miles, and Thermae, a 

 Forum, a Basilica, and all the public buildings of an important 

 Eoman town. A few ditches, becoming rapidly overgrown — 

 the foundation-walls of chambers — a few tesserce, and the tiles 

 of a Hypocaust laid bare within these few years, attest at the 

 same time the endeavours to excavate on the site of the buried 

 city, and the disappointing nature of the result. Nothing can 

 be more barren, tame, and uninteresting than the present 

 appearance of the remains, which in all charity should again be 

 covered up and restored to that repose -from which it seems 

 almost a sacrilege to have brought them into dayHght. 



Thursday, 10th June. — ^The programme of this day embraced 

 an examination of the debris of the Clive Copper Mines in the 

 Keuper Sandstone — the Keuper escarpment of CHve HiU, and 

 the GrinshiU Quarries in the " Waterstones " of the Keuper. 

 The train conveyed the party to Shrewsbury, and carriages 

 thence to CHve Hill. Here the " Bunter " or " Bromsberrow " 

 beds are seen faulted against the "Waterstones." Veins of 

 Copper in the form of carbonate are found along the line of 

 fault, and have been worked at CHve Hill, though the workings 

 are now abandoned. Along the line of the lode very beautiful 

 examples are found, illustrating the disposition of Iron, in 

 variegated strata, which formed the subject of an able paper 



