60 Broughton Gifford. 



placed in the museum of the Bath Institution. Many more such 

 remains would be brought to light, were the cuttings made for 

 scientific, rather than for utilitarian purposes. Descending we 

 come to the Oxford clay, which is full of large sei^taria, masses of 

 stone intersected by septa or seams of calcareous matter, which 

 others have called, from their appearance, "tortoise stones," but 

 which we, with our dairy associations, name "cheeses." 



The moral and physical influences of the geology of this district 

 on man, is a subject which has engaged the attention of John Au- 

 brey. " According to the severall sorts of earth in England (and 

 so all the world over) the indigence are respectively witty or dull, 

 good or bad. In N. "Wiltshire (a dirty clayey country) the indi- 

 gence or aborigines epeake drawlinge; they are phlegmatique, shins 

 pale and livid, slow and dull, heavy of spirit : hereabout is but 

 little tillage or hard labour, they only milk the cowes and make 

 cheese; they feed chiefly on milke meates, which cools their braines 

 too much, and hurts their inventions. These circumstances make 

 them melancholy, contemplative, and malicious : by consequence 

 whereof, come more law suites out of N. Wilts, at least double to 

 the Southern parts. And by the same reason they are generally 

 more apt to be fanatiques ; their persons are generally plump and 

 feggy ; gallipot eies, and some black ; but they are generally hand- 

 some enough." This is a melancholy picture of the state of things 

 here 200 years since. We have not been able, in the interval, ab- 

 solutely to " alter the sort of earth" on which we live ; but we hope 

 that by clearing away the forest, by draining, by more tillage, and 

 by general agricultural improvement, (to say nothing of moral and 

 intellectual agencies), we have considerably modified its ill effects, 

 and are the better in body and in mind accordingly. 



Water. 



Avon, Even, Sevon, or Severn, is the appropriate name of rivers 

 whose course is smooth and gentle ; l and our part of the lower 



1 " There is a gentle nymph, not far from hence, 



That with moist curb sways the smooth Severn stream, 

 Sabrina is her name." — Milton's Comus. 



" Oh, could I flow like thee ! and make thy stream 

 My great example, as it is my theme : 



