164 LIFE OF BENJAMIN SILLIMAN. 



tuition, I may congratulate you, for I never heard as 

 many of the rising generation in England refer as often to 

 any one individual teacher as having given a direction to 

 their taste. Non omnia possumus omnes, and if you cannot 

 yourself explore the rocks from Maine to Florida, you may 

 say that you have sent forth pupils who will do it for you. 

 I have heard from Mantell at last, and was really re- 

 lieved to find that the paralysis was due to a bad accident 

 when he was thrown out of his carriage. We leave on the 

 12th, going by the Hudson to Professor Hitchcock's, and 

 thence to Boston ; there I leave my wife with Mrs. Ticknor, 

 while I make some other excursions, in the course of which 

 I may pay you a flying visit at New Haven 



FROM SIR CHARLES LYELL. 



LONDON, August 17, 1844. 



MY DEAR SIR, I was much obliged to you for writing 

 to me, and for the lively account which you sent me of your 

 very interesting tour to the "West, where I should like much 

 also to go, though I think it very doubtful whether circum- 

 stances or plans of geological tours in another direction, may 

 not prevent me visiting the United States for some years. 

 But my plans are unavoidably uncertain just now, and, in 

 the mean time, I am glad to hear that you and your coun- 

 trymen are moving on with your characteristic activity. I 

 hope to be out at Christmas, but really cannot well estimate 

 the amount of work which remains to be done. My collec- 

 tion of tertiary shells from Virginia and Maryland, South 

 Carolina and Georgia, and my coral plants from Nova 

 Scotia, which I have been studying with much pleasure, 

 have occupied me longer than I anticipated. I regret that 

 Hall has not yet got out his final report of which he has 

 sent me a large part of the illustrations and, I believe, all 

 the letter-press. We want Mathers also on New York. My 

 wife begs me to thank your son particularly for his pres- 

 ent to her of Dana's " Mineralogy," and joins me in con- 



