LIFE OF JAMES DWIGHT DANA 



even at this late hour, seeing that the mails are so much 

 out of order. 



" As to entomology, my hands are quite running over. 

 I have found, in one place and another, as many as half 

 a dozen Cecidomyiczoides, which have given me consider- 

 able trouble. Most of the cells in my possession (chiefly 

 of your collecting) are being delivered of their inhabitants. 

 All that have yet appeared from these sources are new, 

 and some of them very curious. The Solidago has pro- 

 duced twenty or thirty individuals. Of the Ceraph d. 

 (alias No. i), fifteen or twenty have appeared. I have 

 succeeded in eliminating some of their eating apparatus 

 without any very peculiar difficulty. The mandibles are 

 quadridentate, the maxillary palpi four-articulate, and 

 the labial palpi binarticulate." 



A memorandum in Dana's handwriting gives the fol- 

 lowing summary of the voyage : 



" 1833. August I4th, leave New York in the ship of 

 the line Delaware, as an instructor of mathematics, on a 

 cruise to the Mediterranean. Arrive at Cherbourg Sep- 

 tember nth, pass Gibraltar (without stopping) October 

 23d, and arrive at Mahon, island of Minorca, November 

 3d.* During the summer cruise visited Toulon in 

 France; in Italy, Genoa, Leghorn, Florence, Naples, 

 and the surrounding country; passed through the Straits 

 of Messina and spent three months in the Archipelago, 

 visiting Athens, Napoli di Romania, island of Milo, and 

 Smyrna, in whose harbor the greater part of this time 

 was passed. Leave Smyrna September 24th, and arrive 

 in Mahon October Qth. Sunday, October 26th, leave 

 Mahon for New York, where we arrived December 10, 

 1834, soon after which," adds the traveller, " my con- 

 nection with the navy was dissolved." 



The first impressions of nautical life are thus given in 

 a letter to his mother from the ship Delaware, Hampton 

 Roads, a short time previous to the beginning of the 

 cruise. 



* Before leaving Mahon, Dana was transferred to the frigate United 

 States, on which the voyage was continued until the return to America. 



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