10 NEW HAVEN. CHAP. I. tinct joints which divide the sandstone contrast finely with the divisional planes which separate the basalt into pillars. The evidence of alteration by heat at the point of contact is very marked, and has been well described by Dr. Silliman in a paper on the rocks of this place. The city of New Haven, with a population of 14,000 souls, possesses, like Springfield, fine avenues of trees in its streets, which mingle agreeably with the buildings of the university, and the numerous churches, of which we counted near twenty steeples. When attending service, according to the Presbyterian form, in the College chapel on Sunday, I could scarcely believe I was not in Scotland. In an expedition to the north of the town, accompanied by Professor Silliman, his son, and Mr. Percival, a geologist to whom the execution of the State Survey of Connecticut was entrusted, I examined the red sandstone (New Red) and intrusive volcanic rocks (basalt and greenstone) of this neighbourhood. Dykes of various sizes intersect the stratified rocks, and occasionally flow in great tabular masses nearly parallel to the strata, so as to have the picturesque effect of cappings of columnar basalt, although Mr. Percival has shown that they are in reality intrusive, and alter the strata in contact both above and below. The East and West Rocks near New Haven, crowned with trap, bear a strong resemblance in their outline and general aspect to Salisbury Crags, and other hills of the same structure near Edinburgh. We saw in Hampden parish, lat. 41° 19', on the summit of a high hill of sandstone, a huge erratic block of greenstone, 100 feet in circumference, and pro Other large trans jecting 11 feet above ground. ported fragments have been met with more than 1000 feet above the level of the sea, and every where straight parallel furrows appear on the smooth surface of the rocks, where the superficial gravel and sand are removed. In a garden at New Haven (August 13.) I saw, for the first time, a humming bird on the wing. It was fluttering round the flowers of a Gladiolus. In the suburbs we gathered a splendid wild flower, the scarlet Lobelia, and a large sweet-scented water-lily. The only singing bird which we heard was a thrush with a red breast, which they call here the robin. The grasshoppers were as numerous and as noisy as in Italy. As we returned in the evening over some low marshy ground, we saw several fire-flies, showing an occasional bright spark. They are small beetles resembling our male glow-worms (Lampyris Linn., Pyrolampis scintillans Say). Aug. 13.-A large steamer carried us from New Haven to New York, a distance of about ninety miles, in less than six hours. We had Long Island on the one side, and the main land on the other, the scenery at first tame from the width of the channel, but very lively and striking when this became more contracted, and at length we seemed to sail into the very suburbs of the great city itself, passing between green islands, some of them covered with buildings and villas. We had the same bright sunshine which we have enjoyed ever since we landed, and an atmosphere unsullied by the chimnies of countless steam-boats, factories, and houses, of a population of more than 300,000 souls, 12 SCENERY OF THE HUDSON. CHAP. I. thanks to the remoteness of all fuel save anthracite and wood. Next day, I went with Mr. Redfield, well known by his meteorological writings, across the Passaic river to Newark in New Jersey, where we examined quarries of the New Red Sandstone, and saw the surfaces of the strata ripple-marked, and with impressions of raindrops. They also exhibit casts on their under sides of cracks, which have been formed by the shrinking of the layers of clay when drying. These appearances, together with imbedded fragments of carbonized fossil wood, such as may have been drifted on a beach, bespeak the littoral character of the formation on which, in many places in Connecticut and Massachusetts, the fossil footsteps of birds, to which I shall afterwards allude, have been found imprinted. Aug. 16. Sailed in the splendid new steam-ship the Troy, in company with about 500 passengers, from New York to Albany, 145 miles, at the rate of about 16 miles an hour. When I was informed that " seventeen of these vessels went to a mile," it seemed incredible, but I found that in fact the deck measured 300 feet in length. To give a sufficient supply of oxygen to the anthracite, the machinery is made to work two bellows, which blow a strong current of air into the furnace. The Hudson is an arm of the sea or estuary, about twelve fathoms deep, above New York, and its waters are inhabited by a curious mixture of marine and fresh-water plants and mollusca. At first on our left, or on the western bank, we had a lofty precipice of columnar basalt from 400 to 600 feet in height, called the Palisades, extremely picturesque. This basalt rests on sandstone, which is of the same age as that before mentioned near New Haven, but has an opposite or westward dip. On arriving at the Highlands, the winding channel is closed in by steep hills of gneiss on both sides, and the vessel often holds her course as if bearing directly on the land. The stranger cannot guess in which direction he is to penetrate the rocky gorge, but he soon emerges again into a broad valley, the blue Catskill mountains appearing in the distance. The scenery deserves all the praise which has been lavished upon it, and when the passage is made in nine hours it is full of variety and contrast. At Albany, a town finely situated on the Hudson, and the capital of the State of New York, I found several geologists employed in the Government survey, and busily engaged in forming a fine museum, to illustrate the organic remains and mineral products of the -country. This State is divided into about the same number of counties as England, and is not very inferior to it in extent of territory. The legislature four years ago voted a considerable sum of money, more than 200,000 dollars, or 40,000 guineas, for exploring its Natural History and mineral structure; and at the end of the first two years several of the geological surveyors, of whom four principal ones were appointed, reported, among other results, their opinion, that no coal would ever be discovered in their respective districts. This announcement caused no small disappointment, especially as the neighbouring state of Pennsylvania was very rich in coal. Accordingly, during my tour, I heard frequent complaints that, not satisfied with their inability to find coal themselves, the surveyors had decided that no one else would ever be able to detect any, having had the presumption to pass a sentence of future 14 GEOLOGICAL SURVEYS. CHAP. 1. sterility on the whole land. Yet, in spite of these expressions of ill-humour, it was satisfactory to observe that the rashness of private speculators had received a wholesome check; and large sums of money, which for twenty years previously had been annually squan· dered in trials for coal in rocks below the carboniferous series, were henceforth saved to the public. There can be little doubt that the advantage derived to the re sources of the State by the cessation of this annual outlay alone, and the more profitable direction since given to private enterprise, is sufficient to indemnify the country, on mere utilitarian grounds, for the sum so munificently expended by the government on geological investigations. The resemblance of certain Silurian rocks on the banks of the Hudson river to the bituminous shales of the true Coal formation was the chief cause of the deception which misled the mining adventurers of New York. I made an excursion southwards from Albany, with a party of geologists, to Normanskill Creek, where there is a waterfall, to examine these black slates, containing graptolites, trilobites, and other Lower Silurian fossils. By persons ignorant of the order of superposition and of fossil remains, they might easily be mistaken for Coal measures, especially as some small particles of anthracite, perhaps of animal origin, do actually occur in them. On leaving Albany, I determined so to plan my route to the Falls of Niagara and back again to the Hudson, as to enable me to see by the way the entire succession of mineral groups from the lowest Silurian up to the coal of Pennsylvania. Mr. James Hall, to whose hands the north-west division of the geological survey of New York had been confided, kindly offered himself as my |