PROCEEDINGS OF THE COTTESWOLD CLUB 187 



" O — y-c-s, Sir William — al)Out the — a — a — 'm : and a 

 vacant gaze confirms the President's susj)icion that he 

 had not been paying that close attention which he ought 

 to have done, to the doctor's exposition of the Quarry. 



I wish here to make a clean breast of it, and confess 

 how this and similar wasted opportunities came home to 

 myself: for several years afterwards a lady called on me at 

 Gloucester, handing me a card, " Miss . . . Ncwnham 

 College, Cambridge," and saying she had been referred to 

 me as a likely person to give her some information about 

 the Geology of the district. I ought at once to have told 

 her that I had practically no acquaintance with Geologv : 

 but I yielded, instead, to the temptation of piecing together 

 the few scraps I had picked up, and trying to make 

 them serve the turn : so I talked about the lias formation, 

 and some of the oolitic beds above, but in so vague a 

 way that what was offered to the lady's notice might 

 almost have applied to any period, from the beds of 

 the glacial epoch down to the beds in the Bell Hotel. 

 Then, hinting that as her time w^as limited she might like 

 to begin at once with some section easy of access, I told 

 her that one of the most interesting I could think of was 

 that of the Quarry on Haresfield Hill, in which she would 

 find the rhynconella cynoccphalus, with which she was 

 doubtless familiar — and taking out my watch I discovered 

 that she would just have comfortable time to catch the 

 next train to Haresfield : which she did : and, as John 

 Bunyan said of the Pilgrim, after he was safely landed — 

 I saw her no more. 



I beg the lady's forgiveness, if these lines should ever 

 meet her eye : for after all, the information I gave her was 

 sound as far as it went : and I can but hope she found the 

 palaeontology of the Quarry as attractive as its more 

 recent fauna proved to old John Smith. 



Haresfield is rich in Roman remains, and it was worth 

 listening to John Niblett's story of his first search after 



