i88 SCHOOL OF MINES AND MUSEUM CHAP, vi 



his head, he would seize the map and rush ahead, 

 calling on the defaulter to come on and look. And he 

 would keep up this offended tone until he felt that his 

 pupil had at last been made to feel his delinquency. 

 Then some snatch of a song or line of an old ballad 

 or fragment from Shakespeare, appropriate to some 

 phase of the incident, would come into his head, and 

 instantly it would be on his lips with probably a hearty 

 laugh, that showed how entirely the cloud had passed 

 away. If a man had any geological faculty in him, it 

 was impossible that it should not be stimulated and 

 educated under such a teacher. And if, unhappily, 

 there was no such faculty, Ramsay soon discovered 

 the defect, and after full trial the recruit was advised 

 to seek other fields of exertion. 



The inspecting duty in the Midland region brought 

 Ramsay into close familiarity with a type of English 

 scenery which contrasted strongly with what, during 

 his Survey life, he had been chiefly used to in Wales. 

 Thus he writes : ' \<$th July. Up into that fine wild 

 part of old England by Cannock Chase. It truly gives 

 an idea of what much of England must have been in 

 the days of Robin Hood wild, undulating, unenclosed 

 ground, covered with heath and bracken, and here and 

 there sprinkled with oaks, birches, and alders. In the 

 woods and on the hillsides you may see the wild deer 

 trooping along, while now and then you raise a lazy 

 heron, or the whirring grouse and black game.' 



* 2$rd. Out to Maxstoke Priory, etc. [Warwick- 

 shire], tracing on Howell's fault. What a noble place 

 that has been, with its piles of building, its great 

 cathedral-like church, and its perfectly-built encircling 

 close walls of smoothed stones with buttress and sloping 

 copings ! I was charmed and grieved at the sight of 



