cleared, we see orchards, gardens, and arable lands, filled with the same fruit trees, the same grain and vegetables, as in Europe, so bountifully has Nature provided that the plants most useful to man should be capable, like himself, of becoming cosmopolites.

Aug. 5.-Went by railway to deliver letters and pay some visits at Nahant, situated on a promontory of the coast, about ten miles N.E. of Boston, where I examined the rocks of hornblende and syenite, traversed by veins of greenstone and basalt which often intersect each other. The surface of the rocks, wherever the incumbent gravel or drift has been recently removed, is polished, furrowed, and striated, as in the north of Europe, especially in Sweden, or in Switzerland, near the great glaciers.

On the beach or bar of sand and shingle, which unites the peninsula with the main land, I collected many recent shells, and was immediately struck with the agreement of several of the most abundant species with our ordinary British littoral shells. Among them were Purpura lapillus, Turbo (Littorina) rudis, Mytilus edulis, Modiola papuana, Mya arenaria, besides others which were evidently geographical representatives of our common species; such as Nassa trivittata, allied to our N. reticulata, Turbo palliatus Say, allied to, if not the same as, our common Turbo neritoides, &c. I afterwards added largely to the list of corresponding species and forms, and Dr. Gould of Boston showed me his collection of the marine shells of Massachusetts and the adjoining ocean, and gave me a list of 70 out of 197 species which he regarded as identical with shells from Europe. After comparing these on my return, with the aid of several able con

chologists, I am convinced that the greater part of these identifications are correct; and, in the place of some considered as doubtful, there are others not enumerated in Dr. Gould's catalogue, which may be substituted, so as to establish a result for which few geologists were prepared, viz. that one third, or about 35 per cent, of the marine shells of this part of America are the same as those on the opposite side of the Atlantic; a large part of the remainder consisting of geographical representatives, and a fraction only of the whole affording characteristic or peculiar forms. I shall have many opportunities of pointing out the geological bearing of this curious, and to me very unexpected, fact.

Several excavations made for railways in the neighbourhood of Boston, through mounds of stratified and unstratified gravel and sand, and also through rock, enabled me to recognise the exact resemblance of this part of New England to the less elevated regions of Norway and Sweden, where granitic rocks are strewed over irregularly with sand and blocks of stone, forming a gently undulating country with numerous ponds and sınall lakes. Indeed, had I not been constantly reminded that I was in America, by the distinctness of the plants, and the birds flying about in the woods, the geological phenomena would have led me to suppose myself in Scotland, or some other part of Northern Europe. These heaps of sand and pebbles are entirely devoid of shells or organic remains, and occasionally huge rounded blocks, brought from a great distance, rest upon them, or are buried in them. The heaps are mainly composed, however, of the materials of neighbouring rocks. At some points the superficial gravel has been pierced to the depth of 100, and even more

than 200, feet, without the solid rock being reached; but more commonly the loose detritus is of moderate thickness, and, when removed, a polished surface of granite, gneiss, or mica schist, is exposed, exhibiting a smooth surface, with occasional scratches or straight parallel furrows. Here and there, rounded and flattened domes of smoothed rock, similar in shape to the "roches moutonnées" which border the Alpine glaciers, are observable. The day after I landed, an excavation recently made for the monument now erecting on Bunker's Hill, enabled me to recognise the likeness of this drift to that of Scandinavia, and every day since I have seen fresh proofs of the complete correspondence of these remote districts. Professor Hitchcock has shown that in New England the parallel grooves or furrows have a general direction nearly north and south, but usually ten or fifteen degrees to the west of north. I have already seen, at Nahant and elsewhere, some marked deviations from this rule, which, however, is correct in the main, and these markings have been found to prevail at all heights in New England, even in mountains more than 2000 feet high.

I have already observed several rounded boulders with one flat side scratched and furrowed, as if it had been held firmly in one position when frozen into ice, and rubbed against a hard rocky bottom.

There is here, as in Sweden, so great an extent of low country remote from any high mountains, that we cannot attribute the effects above described to true glaciers descending in the open air from the higher regions to the plains. If we adopt the glacial theory, we must suppose the country to have been submerged, and that the northern drift was brought here by large bodies of

floating ice, which, by repeatedly running aground on the bottom of the sea for thousands of years, and forcing along the sand under their enormous weight, polished and furrowed the rocky bottom, and on the melting of the ice, let fall their burden of stones or erratic blocks, together with mud and pebbles.

When we recollect that Boston is situated in the latitude of Rome, or in that of the north of Spain, and that the northern drift and erratic blocks in Europe are first met with about the 50th degree of latitude, and then increase as we travel towards the pole; there seems ground for presuming, that the greater cold which now marks the climate of North America had begun to prevail long before the present distribution of land and sea in the northern hemisphere, and before the present climates were established. Perhaps, even in the glacial period of geology, the lines of equal winter's cold, when drawn from Europe to North America, made a curve of about 10° to the southward, as in our own times.

Aug. 9.-After a week spent very agreeably at Boston, we started for New Haven in Connecticut, going the first hundred miles on an excellent railway in about five hours, for three dollars each. The speed of the railways in this State, the most populous in the Union, is greater than elsewhere, and I am told that they are made with American capital, and for the most part pay good interest. There are no tunnels, and so few embankments that they afford the traveller a good view of the country. The number of small lakes and ponds, such as are seen in the country between Lund and Stockholm, in Sweden, affords a pleasing variety to the scenery, and they are as useful

as they are ornamental. The water is beautifully clear, and when frozen to the depth of many feet in winter, supplies those large cubical masses of ice, which are sawed and transported to the principal cities throughout the Union, and even shipped to Calcutta, crossing the equator twice in their outward voyage. It has been truly said, that this part of New England owes its wealth to its industry, the soil being sterile, the timber small, and there being no staple commodities of native growth, except ice and granite.

In the inland country between Boston and Springfield, we saw some sand-hills like the dunes of blown sand near the coast, which were probably formed on the sea-side before the country was elevated to its present height. We passed many fields of maize, or Indian corn, before arriving at Springfield, which is a beautiful village, with fine avenues of the American elm on each side of the wide streets. From Spring

field we descended the river Connecticut in a steamboat. Its banks were covered with an elegant species of golden rod (Solidago), with its showy bright yellow flowers. I have been hitherto disappointed in seeing no large timber, and I am told that it was cut down originally in New England without mercy, because it served as an ambush for the Indians, since which time. it has never recovered, being consumed largely for fuel. The Americans of these Eastern States who visit Europe have, strange to say, derived their ideas of noble trees more from those of our principal English parks, than from the native forests of the New World.

I visited Rocky Hill, near Hartford in Connecticut, where the contact is seen of a large mass of columnar trap with red sandstone. In a large quarry, the dis