96 EQUALITY OF SECTS. CHAP. V great, and also, in part, from the check to improvident marriages, created by the high standard of living to which the lowest work-people aspire, a standard which education is raising higher and higher from day to day. Secondly, I have often heard politicians of opposite parties declare, that there is no safety for the republic, now that the electoral suffrage has been so much. extended, unless every exertion is made to raise the moral and intellectual condition of the masses. The fears entertained by the rich of the dangers of ignorance, is the only good result which I could discover tending to counterbalance the enormous preponderance of evil arising in the United States from so near an approach to universal suffrage. Thirdly, the political and social equality of all religious sects, a blessing which the New Englanders do not owe to the American revolution, for it was fully recognised and enjoyed under the supremacy of the British crown. This equality tends to remove the greatest stumbling block, still standing in the way of national instruction in Great Britain, where we allow one generation after another of the lower classes to grow up without being taught good morals, good behaviour, and the knowledge of things useful and ornamental, because we cannot all agree as to the precise theological doctrines in which they are to be brought up. The religious toleration of the different sects towards each other in Massachusetts is, I fear, accompanied by as little Christian charity as at home, and families are often divided, and the best relations of private life disturbed, by the bitterness of sectarian dogmatism and jealousy; but, politically, all sects are ready to unite against the encroachments of any other, and a great degree of religious freedom is enjoyed, in consequence of there being no sect to which it is ungenteel to belong, no consciences sorely tempted by ambition to conform to a more fashionable creed. In New York the Roman Catholic priests have recently agitated with no small success for a separate allotment of their share of the education fund. They have allied themselves, as in the Belgian revolution, with the extreme democracy to carry their point, and may materially retard the general progress of education. But there is no reason to apprehend that any one sect in New England will have power to play the same game; and these states are the chief colonizers of the West-gentis cunabula, by the rapidity of whose multiplication and progress in civilization the future prospects of the whole confederacy of republics will be mainly determined. During our stay at Boston the citizens gave a splendid ball to the Prince de Joinville, and the Mayor politely sent us tickets of invitation, which gave me an opportunity of satisfying myself that foreigners have not said too much of the beauty of the young American ladies. In general I was so much occupied with my lectures, or in communicating to the Geological Society of London some of the results of my observations during my late tour, that I had no time to enter into society, or to accept the hospitalities of the inhabitants. As soon as it was understood that I wished to live quietly, all pressing invitations were politely abstained from until I had finished my course of lectures; and, afterwards, when I found it necessary to decline a large number of them, no offence was taken. The twenty-fifth of November was appointed by the 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 |