The Historical and local new Bath guide : containing an accurate description of the public buildings, institutions, and amusements of the city; with observations on the medicinal virtues, and directions for the use of the hot waters.

Date:
1823
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Historical and local new Bath guide : containing an accurate description of the public buildings, institutions, and amusements of the city; with observations on the medicinal virtues, and directions for the use of the hot waters. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    sesses an extremely romantic appearance, large fragments of rocks, stunted trees, and a wild and luxuriant vegetation, exhibit a variety of objects for the pencil—here artists and amatures frequeuty devote their days—here the cele- brated Gainsborough gathered those beauties which still bloom in his pictures—this place, the rocks of AVick, and the vale of »St. Catharine, were the schools which nature opened to his genius, and furnished him with materials for the mo?t valuable productions of his peucil. Below these precipices are seen the parallel courses of the canal and Avon as far as Bath, where the former terminates by uniting with the river. Monckton Farleigli-Down lies opposite to the cliffs of Hampton, its abrupt brow, composed of immense strata of stone, the colour of which harmonizing with the heath, fern aud underwood, occasionally covering its declivities, possesses the finer characteristics of mountain scenery. Claverton Down is similar in its views to Hampton, to which it adjoins, and was, some years since, much cele- brated as a course.—The races are now held on Lansdown. To the east of Bath is seen rising above the road to Glou- cester, Little Salisbury, a hill remarkable by its resemblance in figure to the lower half of a cone, the level of its top con- taining many acres of fine land is appopriated to the pur- poses of agriculture. This neighbourhood presents to the botanist and mineralo- gist, an endless source of investigation and delight in nume- rous specimens of local pecidiarity. To the geologist in par- ticular it opens a wide field of interesting research, and affords the most ample testimonies of the great physical revolutions aud changes the surface of this earth has undergone. The rocks, which constitute the hills in this neighbour- hood, consist principally of that species of limestone termed oolite, of which there are two distinct and separate strata. The upper oolite is only removed from the surface by a layer, of what is termed, forest marble and alluvial matter, and is separated from the inferior oolite by a stratum of clay and two kinds of fuller's earth—the true and bastard spe- cies. The inferior oolite covers a bed of lirm blue argilla- cious marl, beneath which lie the white and blue lyas: it is' the blue marl which forma the stratum on which the lower