60 VISIT TO GERMANY. [1847. 



on this subject lay scattered in different books and periodicals. 

 Mr Bowerbank followed, and, on the spur of the moment, sug- 

 gested the establishment of a Tertiary Publishing Society. The 

 idea immediately found favour, and afterwards, at tea downstairs, 

 it was expanded into a proposition to found a society for pub- 

 lishing plates of fossils, not from the Tertiary deposits only, but 

 from all the British formations. This was the origin of the 

 Palseontographical Society. 



In the autumn of this year Mr Russell Scott urged 

 our geologist, who was fagged and worn, to accompany 

 him to a water-cure establishment in Germany, and try 

 a treatment which Mr Scott had been ordered. It 

 proved of the utmost benefit to the latter, but the over- 

 worked City man was so much reduced by the diet and 

 treatment that he never quite recovered from their 

 effects. Extracts from one or two letters from Boppart 

 show, however, that he had regained his spirits, which 

 were no longer affected by his health : 



J. Prestwich to Mrs Russell Scott. MARIENBERG, near BOPPART, 



29th August 1847. 



Here we are, my dearest Isabella, installed in our respective 

 dormitories, with visions of the successive operations in wet sheets, 

 sitzes, c., which are to commence at five to-morrow morning. I 

 presume I am in the cell of some former Sister Theresa, and I 

 suspect with very little addition to the original simplicity of 

 furniture. . . . The view from the window is most beautiful. 

 Below me is the terrace in front of the house, beyond that 

 orchards sloping down to the old walls of Boppart, high and 

 ruinous, and now serving the peaceful part of supporting vines 

 and peach-trees. Over them appear the high-pitched slate roofs 

 and gable -ends of the picturesque old town, with its quaint 

 towers and fine old church in the Early French style. Over the 

 town I could catch a glimpse of the Ehine, on the other side of 

 which rise abrupt vine -clad hills, whilst beyond and behind 

 Boppart are delicious plantations of all sorts of fruit-trees, sur- 

 rounded by high hills covered with wood, with here and there a 



