30 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1830-31. 



fifteen miles distant. An account-book for that year is 

 chiefly a list of small disbursements for fossils and many 

 varieties of minerals, showing the strong bent of his 

 mind. 



A large scrap-book of printed geological sections, and 

 quaint, crude views of coal-mines, volcanoes, basaltic 

 rocks, minerals, skeletons of Plesiosaurus, &c., and with 

 descriptive letterpress, is very interesting. In its pages 

 are occasional verses, entirely geological, gleaned chiefly 

 from ' An Old Fragment.' A quotation from Milton is 

 given in the first page : 



" He the world 



Built on circumfluous waters calm, in wide 

 Crystalline ocean." 



This scrap-book also contained a coloured map and 

 sections of the Boulogne district, which were evidently 

 drawn during the summer sojourn of the Prestw r ich 

 family there, as they bear the inscription in his hand- 

 writing : " Carte et Profils geognostiques du Bassin du 

 Bas Boulonnais, par M. Rozet, J. Prestwich fecit. July 

 1830." He was then eighteen years of age. 



The last portion of the autobiography touches upon 

 another favourite holiday resort: 



I soon had the opportunity of studying the subject in the field, 

 my holidays being [again] spent at Broseley in the Coalbrook Dale 

 Coalfield, where Pennystone iron-ore was [still] largely worked, 

 and where I revelled day after day. I was shown by Mr John 

 Anstie his fine collections from the Madeley pits, and he kindly 

 gave me every facility to study or make use of his specimens. 

 They had already attracted the attention of Dr Buckland, who, I 

 was told, coming one day to see the collection with bag and much 

 mudded, went to the back door and experienced some difficulty 

 from the servants in getting admitted. I also descended a large 

 number of the pits to see the underground structure of the fossil 

 plants in situ. 



