312 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 

 scientific 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 

 years to come will be very great from this consideration alone. City and 

 town lyceums ought also to possess the Journal of Science. They can well 

 afford 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 good 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, H. L. P. 



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 Echinodermaia. — We are informed by Prof 

 Agassiz, that he is now occupied upon a detailed description of the Echi- 

 nodermata, the prodrome of this work having appeared some years ago. 



* See this No., page 46, under the doings of the British Association. 



