THE HAMPSHIRE ANTIQUARY & NATURALIST. 



OXFORD.* 



There is so much community of interest between 

 Oxford and Winchester, and, we may say, Hampshire 

 generally, that Mr. Andrew Lang's " Oxford : 

 Historical and Descriptive Notes " should find many 

 readers in this county. On the one hand Oxford 

 owes several of its colleges to Hampshire men our 

 Bishops have been great benefactors of learning and 

 on the other hand many of Hampshire's sons have 

 gone for their education to the ancient university. 

 Mr. Lang's o\vn college, Merton, apparently 

 owes its origin to a native of Basingstoke. 

 For Walter de Merton, who is usually supposed from 

 his name to have been a native of Merton in Surrey, 

 was, if we may trust Messrs. Baigent and Millard's 

 " History of Basingtoke," a native of the Hampshire 

 town. So they state definitely on page 40 of that 

 work, though it somewhat shakes our confidence in 

 their reliability when they say further on (page 571) 

 that " he was probably born there." Though not 

 the earliest college, Merton was the first to receive 

 the complete organization which distinguishes the 

 colleges of Oxford and Cambridge from those of other 

 ancient universities. A century later Bishop William 

 of Wykeham founded " Seinte Marie College of 

 Wyncestre in Oxenford," or New College, as it is 

 popularly called. Then another Bishop of Win- 

 chester, William of Waynflete, founded Magdalen 

 College, using the revenues of the suppressed 

 monastery at Selborne as part of the endowment. 

 And, after another hundred years had elapsed, Bishop 

 Fox founded Corpus Christi. Of Waynflete Mr. 

 Lang writes, with a certain sigh of regret, how much 

 harm to study has he unwittingly done, and how 

 much he has added to the romance of Oxford. " It 

 is easy to understand that men find it a very weary 

 task to read in sight of the beauty of the groves of 

 Magdalen." 



Mr. Lang's work is not a history, and in this re- 

 spect differs from the Rev. C. W. Boase's " Oxford.'' 

 It is indeed a series of descriptive notes, written, we 

 might almost say, to illustrate the pictures. He gives 

 us pleasantly sketched accounts of the town and the 

 university in early times, of the period of the Renais- 

 sance and the Reformation, and of the Jacobean and 

 Georgian times, giving also a special chapter to 

 " Poets at Oxford : Shelley and Landor." Of Gilbert 

 White, of Selborne, who was Proctor in 1752, he 

 gives some pleasant touches. 



White paid some attention to dress, and got a feather- 

 topp'd grizzled wig from London ; cost him 2 53. He 

 bought " mountain win^, very old and good," and had his 

 crest engraved on his teaspoons, that every thing might 

 be handsome about him. When he treated the Masters of 

 Arts in Oriel Hall they ate a hundred pounds weight of 



biscuits not, we trust, without marmalade 



On November 6, White lost one shilling " at cards, in 



"Oxford : Brief Historical and Descriptive Notes. By 

 Andrew Lang, M. A., late Fellowol Merton College, Oxford. 

 London : Seeley and Co., 1899. 8vo. With 40 illustra- 

 tions. 



common room." He went from Selborne to Oxford" in a 

 post-chaise with Je-iny Croke "; and he gave Jenny a 

 " round China-turene." .... It is well to remember 

 White and Johnson when the Gibbon of that or any other 

 day bewails the intellectual poverty of Oxford. 



The illustrations are from drawings by several 

 different artists, and include views of Merton College 

 and its muniment room, New College, and the tower, 

 stone pulpit, and cloisters of Magdalen. The book is 

 nicely got up, and forms a pleasing reminiscence of 

 the old university town. 



THE HAMPSHIRE IXDEPEXDEXT, March 15, 1890. 



THE NEW GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF THE 

 ISLE OF WIGHT. 



The original geological survey of the Isle of Wight, 

 made on the old Ordnance Map on the scale of an 

 inch to the mile, was published in 1856, and in the 

 same year appeared the Memoir, by Edward Forbes, 

 " On the Tertiary Fluvio-marine Formation of the 

 Isle of Wight," which of course referred only to the 

 northern part of the island, except for a few notes 

 near the end. In 1862 the general Memoir on the 

 island was issued, and this has been out of print for 

 some years. 



From the preface of what is nominally the second 

 edition of the last work*, we take the following 

 remarks made by Mr. Geikie, the Director General of 

 the Geological Survey: "The onward progress of 

 geological science . . has not left the Isle of 

 Wight unaffected. When, therefore, . . it 

 became necessary to undertake the preparation of a 

 second edition, I felt that no satisfactory progress 

 could be made . . until the Map of the Island had 

 been first revised," and this revision was made on the 

 new Ordnance Survey maps, on the scale of six inches 

 to a mile, which have been reduced, for publication, on 

 to a map, specially prepared for the purpose, from 

 four sheets of the new one-inch map. 



" In the preparation of the present edition of the 

 Memoir (to continue from Mr. Geikie) so many and 

 important have been the changes required that the 

 work may not unfairly be described as a new one,'' 

 and this remark may be applied to the map also ; for 

 not only has much of the old boundary-lines been 

 revised, but a great many new lines have been drawn, 

 which are wholly unrepresented on the old map. 



The chief points in which the new map differs from 

 the old are: i. The extension of the Alluvium up 

 the valleys, whereas in the old one it is shown only 

 at parts of the eastern and western valleys, which un- 

 fortunately are tenanted by streams of the same name, 

 Yar. 2. The mapping of the Drift, in five divisions 



* Memoirs of the Geological Survey, England and Wales. 

 The Geology of the Islg of Wight, by H. W. Bristow. 

 Second Edition, revised and enlarged, by C. Reid and A. 

 Strahan. Pp. xvi, 350; 5 folding plates. Dated 1889, but 

 not really issued till lately. 



