210 THE GEOLOGICAL SUKVEY 



to take rooms for some time at 3 Great Kyder Street, near the 

 temporary quarters of the Sm-vey, and Jermyn Street, where 

 the Museum of Practical Geology was being built for its 

 accommodation. 



Of his occupations at this time he writes to Dawson Turner 

 (April 31, 1846): 



At present I am worked rather hard, having to go into 

 town every day to study fossil Botany, until the proposed 

 Museum is built in Piccadilly. The apartments now filling 

 up are thus only temporary, and are granted by the Dean 

 of Westminster in the shape of servants' rooms over his 

 stable. Though small, they are neat and quite suitable, 

 looking into Dean's Yard and entering by a respectable 

 little doorway on the courtyard. The Dean is very civil 

 and busy in his improvements of the badly dilapidated 

 yard ; he is giving us a fine lamp opposite our door and 

 otherwise takes a great interest in all that is going on. 



The great difference between my father's and all other 

 Government employments evidently consists in his not 

 being supplied with tools, as I am in my humble capacity, 

 and as Brown and all other public officers whose real income 

 is thus a'p'parently not so good as my father's ; but it is 

 apparently only, for if they had to purchase their books 

 and plants they would all be ruined. 



In May and June his work took him into South Wales, to 

 examine the coal-beds for fossil plants in situ ; in August and 

 September to the Bristol coalfield. In South Wales, where 

 * De la Beche appears very pleased with what I have done,' 

 his headquarters were near Swansea, with his grandfather's 

 old friends the Dillwyns,^ whom he delighted by discovering 

 the Lesser Wintergreen {Pyrola minor), which had not been 

 found in the neighbourhood before. Their son, Lewis Dillwyn, 



1 Lewis Weston Dillwyn (1778-1855), botanist, conchologist, and potter, 

 was born at Ipswich, within touch of the Turner-Hooker circle. It was not 

 till 1803 that he moved to Swansea to take charge of the pottery bought by 

 his father. He had already begun his Natural History of British Confervae, 

 and collaborated with Dawson Turner in the Botanist's Guide through England 

 and Wales, 1805. At Swansea he wrote on the local flora and fauna and the 

 history of the city, as well as sharing in civic afiairs. He was M.P. from 

 1832-7. 



