212 Miscellanies. 
concealed wealth, that richly repays them for the expense. We have to 
thank you and your Journal for a large part of this rapid improvement: 
and it is a poor compliment for the intrinsic merit of your publication, 
for the public spirit which you have shown in persevering amid many dis- 
couragements, and for the aid and stimulus which you have afforded to 
seientific research in our land, and what I have to suggest is this. Near- 
ly all the colleges in our country, I presume already take the Journal: 
every one ought to have a complete set, for it affords us a good exhibition 
of many of the most important facts attending the advancement of sci- 
ence in our country, and independent of its present utility, its value in 
ber to come will ~~ = great whe this consideration alone. City and 
Journal of Science. They can well 
ford ‘the expense and they will hardly find such a condensed mass of valu- 
able matter any where else. We should encourage it as a book for reading 
in our families : the mind will be informed and the taste improved. Much 
of it would be intelligible, at the outset; and by conversation and a lit- 
tle study we could easily make more of it so, even to families. If it is too 
expensive for individual subscription, two or three gentlemen might easily 
unite, and in this way a number of goud subscribers might be procured in 
every town. Lastly and especially, let those who take it, be punctual in 
paying for it. 
A more valuable publication, I am satisfied, cannot be found in the 
whole range of periodicals in our land. With sincere respect, 
Your friend and servant, HEP. 
2. Prof. Agassiz’ Great Work on Fossil Fishes.*—We are happy to 
learn, by a letter dated Nov. 12, 1837, from this distinguished and indefati- 
gable naturalist, that he had then very recently published the Sth and 9th 
livraisons of his magnificent work. We are thus assured that it is going 
forward towards, we trust, a happy completion, and that the rumor of its 
discontinuance was unfounded. Prof. Agassiz speaks in terms of warm 
commendation of the labors of Mr. Redfield, Jr., on the fossil fishes of 
Durham, Ct., &c., as they appear in a memoir presented last winter to 
the Lyceum of Natural History of New York, with drawings. M. Agas- 
siz remarks, that these fossil fishes are described and determined by Mr. 
Redfield “ with rare talent, and that it is much to be desired for the in- 
terest of science, that this expert (habile) naturalist should continue his 
researches, which appear to be destined to throw, at a future day, great 
light upon the geological relations of America and Europe.” 
3. Prof. Agassiz on the Echinodermata.—We are informed by Prof. 
Agassiz, that he is now otcupied upon a detailed description of the Echi- 
nodermata, the prodrome of this work having appeared some years ago- 
cmc 
"* See this No., page 46, under the doings of the British Association. 
