98 SOCIETY IN BOSTON. CHAP V. Governor of the State to be what is here called Thanksgiving-Day-an institution as old as the times of the Pilgrim Fathers, one day in the year being set apart for thanksgiving for the mercies of the past year. As a festival it stands very much in the place of Christmas Day as kept in England and Germany, being always in the winter, and every body going to church in the morning and meeting in large family parties in the evening. To one of these we were most kindly welcomed; and the reception which we met with here and in the few families to which we had letters of introduction, made us entirely forget that we were foreigners. Several of our new acquaintances indeed had travelled in England and on the Continent, and were in constant correspondence with our own literary and scientific friends, so that we were always hearing from them some personal news of those with whom we were most intimate in Europe, and we often reflected with surprise in how many parts of England we should have felt less at home. I remember an eminent English writer once saying to me, when he had just read a recently-published book on the United States, "I wonder the author went so far to see disagreeable people, when there are so many of them at home." It would certainly be strange if persons of refined habits, even without being fastidious, who travel to see life, and think it their duty, with a view of studying character, to associate indiscriminately with all kinds of people, visiting the first strangers who ask them to their houses, and choosing their companions without reference to congeniality of taste, pursuits, manners, or opinions, did not find society in their own or any other country in the world intolerable. CHAPTER VI. Fall of Snow and Sleigh-driving at Boston.-Journey to New Haven.-Ichthyolites of Durham, Connecticut.-Age of Red Sandstone.-Income of Farmers.-Baltimore.—Washington.-National Museum.-Natural Impediments to the Growth of Washington.— Why chosen for the Capital.-Richmond, Virginia.—Effects of Slave-labour.—Low Region on the Atlantic Border, occupied by Tertiary Strata.-Infusorial Bed at Richmond.-Miocene Shells and Corals in the Cliffs of the James River compared with Fossils of the European Crag and Faluns.-Analogy of Forms and Difference of Species.-Proportion of Species.-Commencement of the present Geographical Distribution of Mollusca. Nov. 29. 1841.-ALTHOUGH we were in the latitude of Rome, and there were no mountains near us, we had a heavy fall of snow at Boston this day, followed by bright sunshine and hard frost. It was a cheerful scene to see the sleighs gliding noiselessly about the streets, and to hear the bells, tied to the horses' heads, warning the passer-by of their swift approach. As it was now the best season to geologise in the southern States, I determined to make a flight in that direction; and we had gone no farther than New Haven before we found that all the snow had disappeared. I accordingly took the opportunity when there of making a geological excursion, with Mr. Silliman, jun., Professor Hubbard, and Mr. Whelpley, to examine the red sandstone strata, containing Ichthyolites, by the side of a small waterfall at Middlefield, one mile from Durham, in Connecticut. The remains of fish occur in a finegrained slaty sandstone, black and bituminous, about six feet thick, which alternates with a coarse conglom 100 AGE OF RED SANDSTONE. CHAP. VI. erate, some of the quartz pebbles being two or three inches in diameter. Small fragments of fossil wood and a ripple-marked surface were observed in some of the strata near the fossil-fish. This sandstone is newer than the coal, but we have not yet sufficient data to pronounce very decidedly on its true age. The footsteps of numerous species of birds afford no indication, because in Europe we have as yet no traces of birds in rocks of such high antiquity, and consequently no corresponding term of comparison. As to the fish, they have most of them been referred to the genus Paleoniscus, and have been supposed, therefore, by analogy, to imply that the Connecticut deposit is of the age of the Magnesian limestone (Lower New Red or Permian Group of Europe). But Mr. Redfield has expressed some doubt whether these American fossils might not constitute a new, though allied genus, having the scales, and apparently the vertebræ, prolonged to a more limited extent into the upper lobe of the tail than in the European species. In the language of M. Agassiz, they are less heterocercal than the European Paleoniscus, and, therefore, less closely related to that type which is universal in the more ancient or paleozoic formations. Sir P. Egerton, who confirms these reinarks of Mr. Redfield, and adds other distinctions, such as the strong and conical teeth, and the smallness of the oral aperture, informs me that in the five or six distinct species obtained by me from Durham, Connecticut, he finds the scales to be smoother than in the Paleonisci of the Magnesian limestone; for the latter have their scales more or less striated and serrated on the posterior margins. The American fossils approximate in the character above alluded to, or in having smooth scales, to the coal-measure species, so that the evidence derived ftom Ichthyology is very conflicting. Professor H. D. Rogers infers from his brother's discovery in Virginia of shells in this formation, referred to the Posidonia Keuperi, a characteristic species of the European Trias, that the Connecticut sandstone belongs to the Upper New Red or Triassic system. In the neighbourhood of Durham we learnt that a snow-storm, which occurred there in the first week of October, had seriously injured the woods, weighing down the boughs then in full leaf, and snapping off the leading shoots. For the first time in the United States I heard great concern expressed for the damage sustained by the timber, which is beginning to grow scarce in New England, where coal is dear. The valley of the Connecticut presents a pleasing picture of a rural population, where there is neither poverty nor great wealth. I was told by well-informed persons, that if the land and stock of the farmers or small proprietors were sold off and invested in securities giving six per cent. interest, their average incomes would not exceed more than from 80l. to 1207. a year. An old gentleman who lately re-visited Durham, his native place, after an absence of twenty-five years, told me that in this interval the large families, the equal subdivision of the paternal estates among children, and the efforts made for the outfit of sons migrating to the West, had sensibly lowered the fortunes of the Connecticut yeomanry, so that they were reduced nearer to the condition of labourers than when he left them. Pursuing my course southwards, I found that the snow-storm had been less heavy at New York, still less at Philadelphia, and after crossing the Susquehanna 102 WASHINGTON.-NATIONAL MUSEUM. CHAP. VI. (Dec. 13.) the weather began to resemble that of an English spring. In the suburbs of Baltimore, the locomotive engines being detached, our cars were drawn by horses on a railway into the middle of the town. Maryland was the first slave state we had visited; and at Baltimore we were reminded for the first time of the poorer inhabitants of a large European city by the mean dwellings and dress of some of the labouring class, both coloured and white. At Washington I was shown the newly-founded national museum, in which the objects of natural history and other treasures collected during the late voyage of discovery to the Antarctic regions, the South Seas, and California, are deposited. Such a national repository would be invaluable at Philadelphia, New York, or Boston, but here there is no university, no classes of students in science or literature, no philosophical societies, no people who seem to have any leisure. The members of Congress rarely have town residences in this place, but, leaving their families in large cities, where they may enjoy more refined society, they live here in boarding-houses until their political duties and the session are over. If the most eminent legislators and statesmen, the lawyers of the supreme courts, and the foreign ambassadors, had all been assembled here. for a great part of the year with their families, in a wealthy and flourishing metropolis, the social and political results of a great centre of influence and authority could not have failed to be most beneficial. Circumstances purely accidental, and not the intentional jealousy of the democracy, have checked the growth of the capital, and deprived it of the constitutional ascendency which it might otherwise have exerted. Con |