Briefly, I did not gain fortune as an inventor: though I urged my horse-shoe at least as a valuable thought, and one worth a trial, to save our poor horses on asphalte pavements and in hard frosts.
It is a losing game to attempt to force an invention: so many vested interests oppose, and so many are the competitors: moreover, some one always rushes into the pool of Bethesda before you.
I thought also that there might as well be "essence of tea," as well as of coffee; but nothing came of it.

Also amongst other of my addled eggs of invention, I may mention that in my chemistry days as a youth I suggested to a scientific neighbour, Dr.Kerrison, that glass might be rendered less fragile by being mixed in the casting with some chemical compound of lead,--much as now has come out in the patent toughened glass.

Also we initiated mild experiments about an imitation of volcanic forces in melting pounded stone into moulds,--as recently done by Mr.
Lindsay Bucknall with slag:--but unluckily we found that the manufacture of basalt was beyond our small furnace power: I fancied that apparently carved pinnacles and gurgoyles might be cast in stone; and though beyond Dr.Kerrison and myself, perhaps it may still be done by the hot-blast melting up crushed granite.
* * * * * Among these small matters of an author's natural inventiveness, I will preserve here a few of the literary class: _e.g._, (1.) I claim to have discovered the etymology of Punch, which Mark Antony Lower in his Patronymica says is "a name the origin of which is in total obscurity." Now, I found it out thus,--when at Haverfordwest in 1858 I saw over the mantel of the hostelry, perhaps there still, a map of the Roman earthwork called locally Punch Castle; and considering how that the neighbouring hills are named Precelly (Procella, storm) as often drawing down the rain-clouds,--that Caer Leon is Castrum Legionis, and that there is a Roman bridge over the little river there still styled Ultra Pontem--I decided at once that Pontii Castellum was the true name for Punch Castle.

Of course, Pontius Pilate and Judas appear in the mediaeval puppet-plays as Punch and Judy,--while Toby refers to Tobit's dog, in a happy confusion of names and dates.

The Pontius of the Castle was Prater of the Second Legion.