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had paid more attention to geology than to mineralogy, 

 that the subject of fossils had particularly attracted his no- 

 tice, having resided for some time in the vicinity of Trenton, 

 N. Y., where the Silurian Fossils abound. He gave a brief 

 account of Borne of the principal species there found. 



Mr. C. M. TRACY of Lynn, being called upon, alluded to 

 the favorable impressions he received while listening to a 

 course of lectures by the first speaker on mineralogy some 

 twenty years since ; and to these he attributed no small part 

 of the interest he now felt in the subject of natural history. 

 Pleasantly alluding to the remarks of the two speakers who* 

 had preceded, to the effect that the crystals were the flowers 

 of the rocks, and the fossils the flowers of rocks of a more re- 

 cent formation, he said we have here the living flowers, and 

 the world was not rendered habitable till the rocks were cov- 

 ered with soil, and clothed with beautiful verdure. He then 

 described the flowers which had been gathered, in his pleas- 

 ant and instructive manner. Among these were the beach 

 pea, a relative of the sweet pea but not of the eatable kind : 

 the woodbine, or better called the american creeper, which 

 comes very near being a grape vine : the catbrier, the plague 

 of our thickets and representing to us the true sarsaparilla : 

 the wild sarsaparilla and the dwarf elder, which do not merit 

 the name, having no affinity with the sarsaparilla, but 

 more with the parsnip and celery : the sweet alder or pep- 

 perbush, belonging to the Heath Family but flowering later 

 than most of its fellows : the checkerberry, belonging to the 

 same family and well known for its spiciness, but called by 

 too many names : the seaside golden-rod, one of the show- 

 iest and betraying the effect of the saline air by its fleshy 

 leaves ; the sea-rocket, affected in the same way and ta- 

 king so much salt as to taste of it ; the hemp, well known for 

 its fiber, and closely akin to the Cannabis Indica, or intoxica- 

 ting Indian hemp : the field clover, familiarly called "pussy 

 clover" from its wooly heads: and the dodder, whose truly 



