38 RAMBLES AND REVERIES. 



and the Mining Institute, and it was by the help 

 of these that our way had been so prepared as that 

 we found it easy to obtain access to everything 

 that a geologist might wish to see. 



Operations were commenced at Truro, where we 

 were conducted over the new cathedral, just then 

 on the eve of being opened. After this the valuable 

 museum of the Royal Institution of Cornwall was 

 inspected, and then we threw ourselves in earnest 

 into the organized plans for the day, namely, to 

 visit several works connected with one of the most 

 remarkable developments of modern industry in 

 Cornwall the quarrying and preparation of China 

 Clay. 



Do not let any of my readers imagine that China 

 clay is at all like London clay, either the slippery 

 material that one walks upon at Sheerness when 

 the tide is out, which the geologists call London 

 clay ; or that abomination of the metropolitan 

 streets too familiar to many who are not geologists. 

 It has no affinity whatever with these, nor any 

 likeness to them. Emblematical of Cornish cha- 

 racter, it is almost spotlessly white. 



First, I must say a word or two about the name 

 of this interesting commodity. It is called China 

 clay, because it was in China that it first became 

 known. For many ages the Celestials manufactured 

 their beautiful ware without a rival. So successful 

 were they in guarding the secret of its composition 

 that it was only within quite recent times that a 

 Jesuit missionary was able to send a sample of 

 the crude material to Europe. The Rev. Hilderic 



