292 GEOLOGY OF MILL CREEK. [CHAP. XXXVI. 



their domestic affairs, a bookseller told me that he 

 had just lost the services of a young shopman who, 

 although a Protestant, like his father, found that his 

 mother, a Catholic, considered it her duty never to 

 let him rest till he adopted some other profession. 

 The priest had told her that he was constantly 

 handling dangerous and heretical books in his store, 

 with which his mind must be contaminated. 



In many of the large towns, in the valley of the 

 Mississippi, the Catholics have established such ex 

 cellent schools, and enforced discipline so well, that 

 the children of Protestants have been attracted there, 

 and many have become proselytes ; but I heard of 

 still more Catholics who have become converts to 

 Protestantism, and I cannot but believe that Ro 

 manism itself will undergo many salutary modifica 

 tions under the influence of the institutions of this 

 country. 



I made an excursion with Messrs. Buchanan, James, 

 Carley, Clark, and Anthony, to Mill Creek, a tribu 

 tary valley of the Ohio, where loam and gravel, with 

 freshwater shells, overlies a deposit of leaves and 

 fossil stems of trees. The shells are of recent species, 

 and the layer of vegetable matter of the same age as 

 that which contains the bones of the mastodon, ele 

 phant, megalonyx, and other extinct animals at Big 

 Bone Lick, in Kentucky.* I afterwards saw in the 

 city some beautiful collections of Silurian fossils 

 from the blue limestone, and was struck with the 



* See ante, p. 257 258. and &quot; Travels in North America,&quot; 

 vol. ii. pp. 62. 65. 67. 



