170 PROFESSOR OWEN ch. v. 



letter written to his wife from York, dated Tues- 

 day, August 4, 1840: — 



' vSince I left you I have gone over more 

 ground than I ever did in my life before in the 

 same time. Thanks to my experienced fellow- 

 traveller [Lord Enniskillen], no time has been 

 lost. From Derby, yesterday morning, we visited 

 Loughboro', Barrow-on-Soar, Leicester, Notting- 

 ham, and returned to Derby to dinner. You may 

 imagine that such a day, after a preceding night's 

 steaming from London, disposed us both for bed 

 soon after dinner was over. This morning we rose 

 at five, and journeyed by railway to York, where 

 we arrived to breakfast at eleven, after a ride of 

 ninety odd miles. Since then we have been spend- 

 ing some hours in the museum, and have visited 

 the Minster Hitherto, I have been dis- 

 appointed of Saurians ; the museums at Leicester 

 and Nottingham were crowded with visitors — 

 working classes. Never saw a better experiment 

 of the amount of danger to be apprehended from 

 indiscriminate admission of English canaille, and, 

 so far as we saw and heard, quite successful. All 

 very orderly and all paws off) but I found myself 

 the centre of a group wherever I had to take 

 notes of a fossil specimen. To-morrow we start 

 for Scarboro'. We have had lovely weather, and 

 gone most of our journeys by railways. Along that 

 from Derby to York there are divers tunnels— 

 " antres vastes." A party of men at work in one 



