Lyndhurst on Feb. 20th,
requesting an exchange of the living to which he had presented my
brother in Dec. 1844 for that of Swineshead: to which he
consented.--On Jan. 29th I went with my wife on a visit to my uncle
George Biddell, at Bradfield St George, near Bury.--On June 9th I went
into the mining district of Cornwall with George Arthur Biddell.--From
Aug. 25th to Sept. 26th I was travelling in France with my sister and
my wife's sister, Georgiana Smith. I was well introduced, and the
journey was interesting.--On Oct. 29th my son Osmund was born.--Mr
F. Baily bequeathed to me _L500_, which realized _L450_."

Here are some extracts from letters written to his wife relating to
the visit to the Cornish mines, &c.--

PEARCE'S HOTEL, FALMOUTH,
_1845, June 12th, Thursday_.

Then we walked to the United Mines in Gwennap. The day was very fine
and now it was perfectly broiling: and the hills here are long and
steep. At the United Mines we found the Captain, and he invited us to
join in a rough dinner, to which he and the other captains were going
to sit down. Then we examined one of the great pumping engines, which
is considered the best in the country: and some other engines. Between
3 and 4 there was to be a setting out of some work to the men by a
sort of Dutch Auction (the usual way of setting out the work here):
some refuse ores were to be broken up and made marketable, and the
subject of competition was, for how little in the pound on the gross
produce the men would work them up. While we were here a man was
brought up who was hurt in blasting: a piece of rock had fallen on
him. At this mine besides the ladder ways, they have buckets sliding
in guides by which the men are brought up: and they are just preparing
for work another apparatus which they say is tried successfully at
another mine (Tresavean): there are two wooden rods _A_ and _B_
reaching from the top to the bottom, moved by cranks from the same
wheel, so that one goes up when the other goes down, and vice versa:
each of these rods has small stages, at such a distance that when the
rod _A_ is down and the rod _B_ is up, the first stage of _A_ is level
with the first stage of _B_: but when the rod _A_ is up and the rod
_B_ is down, the second stage of _A_ is level with the first stage of
_B_: so a man who wants to descend steps on the first stage of _A_ and
waits till it