334 NAMING OF STREETS. [CHAP. XXXIX. 



All the streets which cross Broadway, run east and 

 west, and are numbered, so that they have now ar 

 rived at 146th Street, a mode of designating the 

 different parts of a metropolis worthy of imitation on 

 both sides of the Atlantic, since experience has now 

 proved that there is, in the Anglo-Saxon mind, an in 

 herent poverty of invention in matters of nomen 

 clature. For want of some municipal regulations 

 like those of New York, the same names are in 

 definitely multiplied in every great city, and letters, 

 after wandering over all the streets bearing the same 

 appellation, to the infinite inconvenience and cost of 

 the post-office, are at length received, if haply they 

 ever reach their destination, long after they are due. 



The low island on which New York is built, is com 

 posed of granite and gneiss covered with &quot; drift&quot; and 

 boulders. The original surface being very uneven, 

 the municipality has fixed upon a certain grade or 

 level to which all heights must be lowered by blast 

 ing the rocks or by carting away gravel, and up to 

 which all the cavities must be raised. Besides other 

 advantages of this levelling process, the ground is 

 said to become more healthy and free from malaria, 

 there being no longer any stagnant pools of water 

 standing in the hollows. 



May 10. Paid a visit to Mr. Audubon, the 

 celebrated ornithologist, at his delightful residence 

 on the banks of the Hudson, north of Bloomingdale. 

 His son had just returned from Texas, where lie had 

 been studying the natural history of that country, 

 especially the mammalia, and was disappointed at the 

 few opportunities he had enjoyed of seeing the wild 



