ESSEX WORTHIES. 161
showed me his new French Bible and Prayer-book, which he said he
hoped he should soon be able to read.
Although so earnest a student of science John Brown did not
neglect literature. He was very fond of our English poets. They
were not always technical works that we lads read to him, but
oftentimes poetry. I think that the last piece he asked me to read
to him was Thomson's "Hymn" at the end of the "Seasons."
Like all students of geology of that time he was looked upon by
a certain class as an atheist; but those who knew him could deny
that. He regularly attended his parish church, and he and the
rector, the Rev. H. Jenkins, were always good friends. He was
almost always present at the monthly communion, and was kind and
considerate to his poorer neighbours. One morning two labouring
men called to see him and told him they no longer went to church,
as they had become atheists ! They were begging and thought to
enlist the old gentleman's sympathy by this statement. But to their
great astonishment the old geologist repudiated any such notions,
so that these ingenious schemers gained nothing by their assumed
perversion from the faith, and in the end they retired rather crest-
fallen !
Mr. Brown was, as I have previously stated, a keen observer and
a good experimentalist. He was never contented with knowledge at
second hand. He travelled miles and miles to examine geological
sections, frequently going beyond the bounds of his own county.
Wherever and whenever a well was sunk, a field excavated for brick-
earth, a deep drain made, or a railroad commenced, John Brown was
sure to be there in search of information and fossils. When the
well at Colchester Waterworks was bored down into the Chalk, some
of the chalk was carried to Stanway and carefully washed to obtain
Foraminifera. When it was stated that living toads had been found in
rocks in which they had been enclosed for no one knew how many
years, John Brown tried an experiment. He put a live toad on a
stone or tile with an inverted flower-pot over it and buried these for
three years in a gravelly part of his farm. Upon digging the creature
out it was found alive, but very emaciated, and it died seven days
afterwards. In a second experiment, in which four toads were buried
in a similar way, for three years, he records that when the flower-pots
were dug up not a trace of the toads was found—skin, flesh and
bones had entirely disappeared.
For studying and naming minerals John Brown learned blowpipe
M