noises and alarming appearances. A conflagration drove them away on the 24th of July 1750, but whether an accidental one, or deliberately done, was never discovered. The remains of the Priory stand a quarter of a mile west of the castle, and consist of some unintelligible fragments, and part of the conventual church. A good Gothic window at the east side of the building, and some beautiful mouldings in other parts, mark the splendour of its original appearance, when founded by Gervase Paganell, lord of the manor, in the year 1161. The walls are now occupied by manufacturers, who, in a little adjoining building, grind the glass made in the neighbouring town, and polish fire-irons, and other articles of steel.

But the mineralogy of Dudley is more remarkable than its antiquities. This place may be considered as forming the centre of two ranges of hills, of which one runs towards the north to Wolverhampton, and consists of lime-stone; the other takes a southern course from Dudley, through Rowley, (from thence called the Rowley hills) towards Birmingham, and consists of basalt. On the last of the former chain is situated part of the town of Dudley, and the ruins of its castle; which are undermined by stupendous quarries of admirable lime-stone, whose gaping entrance is half a mile

to the north of the castle. Here a prodigious scene of subterraneous excavation discovers itself, consisting of several lime-stone mines and tunnels worked into the rock, one of which perforates it entirely, and opens again into day at the distance of nearly two miles from its entrance. This is thirteen feet high and nine wide, and at one point sixty-four feet below the surface of the earth. The caverns are truly august, being of great extent, and considerable height; their roof supported by vast rude square pillars of lime-stone, left for that purpose. Various marine productions are found in this mass of rock, such as enchrini, cornua ammonis, anomia, and other common fossils; but the rarest production of this sort is the pediculus marinus, or sea-louse, the entimolithus paradoxus monoculi deperditi of Linnæus, but called, in the homely naturalist's vocabulary of the place where it is found, the Dudley locust. In form it resembles the common wood-louse, except that it is trilobated, and exceeds it considerably in size, some specimens being nearly five inches long, and few so small as the recent insect generally is. Being discovered only at Dudley and another place in the kingdom, the fossil is the more valuable; a circumstance not unknown to the venders of these productions of the

mines at Dudley, who charge most unconscionably for all their specimens.

On quitting Dudley for Walsall, the coal accompanied us for four or five miles, when all vestiges of coal-works disappeared; the country changed its face, and a silicious gravel occupied the place of the clayey soil, which denoted this bituminous fossil beneath it. The lime-stone, however, was still seen; and the town of Walsall appeared from afar, climbing up a lofty hill of this rock, the church crowning its apex.

Dingy with the smoke of manufactories, Walsall boasts no great beauty, but makes a respectable figure in the southern parts of Staffordshire, as a place of trade and opulence. Its population, including its two divisions, the town which is called the borough, and the country part called the foreign, amounts to about nine thousand; a great portion of whom are employed in the manufactory of sadler's ironmongery, stirrups, bits, and spurs, locks and nails. Before the war, also, very large quantities of buckles and chapes were made at Walsall, and exported into foreign countries; but this branch of manufacture is now nearly extinguished, and the inhabitants, in lieu of it, have turned their attention to the lime-stone mining, which is pursued just without the town to vast extent and equal ad

vantage.

So great indeed are the profits attending this speculation, that the value of such property as has lime-stone upon it has increased within these very few years in an incredible proportion, two thousand pounds having been offered for a garden in the town of less than half an acre in dimensions, on account of the valuable lime-stone below its surface.

Taking the road to Lichfield, we had an opportunity of examining with more attention these sources of riches to the town of Walsall. A little to the right of the turnpike, close adjoining to the road, is a group of open quarries, called Walsall lime-pits, belonging to Mr. Griffiths of that town, on a spot of ground that twenty years ago made part of a gentleman's park. Here the lime-stone is found a few feet below the surface of the earth quarried out, and partly burned on the spot and partly sold in its raw state. A pump, worked by a wheel of simple and ingenious construction, clears the pits of the water to which they are liable; and the Wirley and Essington Canal, which passes at no great distance from the works, affords a cheap water-carriage to the most distant parts.

A quarter of a mile further on the turnpike-road is another great lime-stone work, worked in a different manner to the former ones. This lies, like

the one we have just described, on the eastern side of the road; for the dip is so rapid to the westward, that the borers have tried for it on that side of the road to a great depth, but tried in vain; it is called Moss-close mine, belongs to Messrs. Parsons and Lee, and employs twelve men. This is worked in the manner of a mine, (the rock a fine white lyas, lying one hundred and twenty feet below the surface of the ground) the material being blasted with gunpowder, and afterwards drawn up by an engine. The present work is a recent one, but the whole of the land round it, quarried to a great extent, and lying in hideous ruin and combustion, proves that the lime-stone had made an article of trade here many years ago. When brought to the surface, it is sold at the pit for 4s. 3d. the qr. or ten bushels.

Our route led us over Cannock wood, as it is called, a wide extent of heath, without a single vestige of those magnificent forests of oaks which clothed its face in former times, and occasioned its appellation. Its wildness, however, is tamed by the animation of commercial bustle perpetually seen on the numerous canals that intersect its surface, and afford communication between some of the greatest manufacturing towns in the kingdom.

We did not enter Lichfield, nine miles from Walsall, without impressions of great respect for a