415 
{p. 239). To the Wiltshire and in part to the Somerset U.G.S. 
are owing the beginnings or feeders of the rivers Frome, Stour, 
Wiley, Brue, Were, Nadder, Biss and Deverill. In Berkshire the 
Great Western Railway between Swindon and Didcot skirts one 
town (Wantage) and nearly twenty villages which are all provided 
with their own springs from the U.G.S., and no doubt these 
springs were the primary attraction to original settlers. Beyond 
Didcot there are another half dozen villages, the Hagbournes and 
Moretons, with Upton and Blewbury, equally favoured by nature. 
I have remarked that the Bath Field Club, the Wilts Natural 
History Society, and Bath geologists generally have devoted little 
time or space to the two Greensands. There is, however, I am 
glad to testify, one notable exception going back 75 years, namely, 
William Lonsdale, the first Curator of our present Museum, who 
gave many years of unflagging zeal to collecting, arranging and 
cataloguing an immense quantity of fossils and minerals. The 
Institute—I mean the Royal Literary and Scientific Institution— 
possesses two closely and beautifully written manuscript volumes, 
each of 250 to 300 pages, which record with extreme minuteness 
everything of geological interest to be seen for 20 to 30 miles 
round Bath. Within those limits he has detailed all the quarries 
__and sections which then existed in each formation and the exact 
locality where each separate fossil was obtained. Lonsdale, born 
in Bath, Sept. 9, 1794, is one of the many distinguished men of 
whom Bath geologists and Bath citizens may be specially proud, 
and it is gratifying to know that ample testimony has been borne 
_ to his merit by such eminent and competent authorities as 
Buckland, Mantell, Lyell, Murchison and Geikie. This last 
named tell us that Murchison first met Lonsdale in one of 
our neighbouring quarries, “a tall grave man with a huge 
hammer on his shoulder,” and found him so full of information 
that he stayed some days at Bath under his guidance. (Life of 
_ Sir R. Murchison, I. 128). This occurred in 1825. It is right 
here to mention that Murchison visited our city at intervals 
during the succeeding 40 years, and that both his parents lie 
buried at Batheaston. (234). 
