344 DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF THE SURVEY CHAP, x 



While on the journey through Scotland, he sent 

 the following account of it to his friends at Dolau- 

 cothi : ' From one of the windows of this coffee-room 

 [in Perth] I can see the Tay, full-flooded, rushing 

 through the arches of that noble bridge, which reminds 

 me of the bridge across the Moselle at Treves, only 

 both river and bridge at Perth are more striking than 

 those of Treves. Of a verity there is no denying the 

 fact that the Tay is the finest river in Britain, with 

 more water in it than even the Thames or the Severn, 

 and such a varied landscape to flow through, with 

 hills and cliffs, woods and swelling fields, all undulating 

 and brae-like, except the noble haughs or meadows 

 that here and there form the banks of the river, and 

 of which the Inches of Perth (once islands) form such 

 beautiful examples. 



'I went to Keswick, Cockermouth, Carlisle, Hawick, 

 Melrose, Galashiels, Peebles, Edinburgh, Leadhills, 

 and Moffat, Dumfries, Kirkcudbright, Dumfries again 

 and Edinburgh, and so to Arbroath, Stonehaven, 

 Blairgowrie, and Perth. There is a catalogue for you, 

 that beats Homer's catalogue of ships, or Milton's 

 catalogue of devils. I hope ere a fortnight elapses 

 to be in the bosom of my own family at Cromwell 

 Crescent.' 



Returning to London, he was soon once again in 

 the midst of his * new edition ' and other multifarious 

 preparations. His paper on the geology of Gibraltar 

 was read before the Geological Society on the 6th 

 March 1878, and he gave a Friday evening discourse 

 on the subject on the 24th May, which was his last 

 appearance before the Royal Institution. The fifth 

 edition of his Physical Geology and Geography of 

 Great Britain, on which he had been engaged in 



