76 DEATH OF HIS MOTHER. [1850. 



J. Prestwich to W. Cunnington. LONDON, 25th March 1850. 



DEAR CUNNINGTON, A party of vagrant geologists will alight 

 on Friday morning next, somewhere on the Chalk Downs south 

 of the Farringdon Eoad Station. On Friday night they will 

 probably sleep at Farringdon ; on Saturday at Swindon. The 

 party will consist of Austen, Sharpe, Prof. E. Forbes, Mcol (?), 

 Tylor, Morris (? ?), and myself. Can you manage to join us ? It 

 would give me much pleasure to see you. I expect we shall 

 do some good work and examine a considerable tract of country, 

 as we purpose walking about twenty miles per day. I intend 

 to try to get them (or part of them) as far as Devizes. If so, 

 we shall make a descent then on Sunday night or early on 

 Monday morning, so as to meet with you at home on Monday 

 as a likely day. Your collection is one which a man of the 

 Greensand as Austen ought to see. If you can manage to join 

 us I will give you fuller particulars where to meet. I leave 

 town on Thursday night. Yours very sincerely, 



J. PRESTWICH. 



In the early summer a great sorrow overtook him : 

 in June 1850 he lost his mother, who had been in 

 failing health for several years. To his loving nature 

 this was a keen trial. He never spoke of her ex- 

 cept with great reverence, and in accents which 

 showed how tenderly he cherished her memory. Like 

 a true mother, she had been in the habit of reading 

 every word of her son's geological memoirs no matter 

 how technical. One of these bears the inscription, 

 " To my dearly loved mother, the first and last 

 thought of the writer." Her miniature, in a dress 

 of white lace devoid of ornament, was always in sight : 

 it hung above his library mantel-shelf. 



Among letters of this date we find one to his in- 

 teresting young niece Sophia Scott, labelled " my dear 

 uncle," written when her health showed symptoms of 

 fatal decline. Sophia died at Malaga, where she had 



