TOUR IN THE UNITED STATES. 183 



eight at a time ! These very diagrams, displayed at a conver- 

 sazione as " my American diagrams," were thoughtjine, but you 

 do things on a large scale on this side the water. 



I got into an omnibus and drove to Cambridge, a rambling 

 village of neat suburban houses, with trim hedges, and nice 

 paling, pleasing to the eye. I was dropped at the corner of the 

 Botanical Garden, carried my trunk inside the gate, then made 

 for the house, and met Dr. Gray at the door. A warm greeting, 

 and I was at home in five minutes, and am now writing in a 

 charming bedroom looking into the garden on two sides, with an 

 aspen opposite the window, which is rustling with a noise 

 like ladies' silk dresses, and looking yellow as gold. Three 

 cheers ! Dr. Gray is a trump, and has lent me such a store of 

 huge, big diagrams, that I shall now be rich in pictorial illustra- 

 tions. I now only wish that the commentary may prove worthy 

 of the canvas. 



20th. Yesterday we had a dinner-party, the lion of which was 

 Sir J. B. ; but to me my neighbour at table, Professor Agassiz, 

 shared largely in the leonine honours. He is a very remarkable 

 man, with a most capacious forehead, ardent eye, and expressive 

 mouth ; and the inside of the man does not belie the outside. T. 

 may remember him at the Dublin Association. He is the same 

 person with fifteen years' development of mind, during which 

 period he has had ever-extending opportunities of bringing his 

 great powers into operation. He has here a large field for 

 zoology, and is an omnivorous worker in it. No doubt he will 

 secure a permanent station among the chief illuminators of the 

 science. Eichardson was very entertaining, though he required 

 to be led out, not pouring his information for any one to pick up. 

 The thermometer where he wintered last year stood between 60° 

 and 70° below zero. An astronomer at table, Mr. Bond, said 

 his thermometer only went 7° below zero last year, and the 

 greatest he had seen it was 18°. This seemed nothing compared 

 with the Polar winters. In latitude 68° Sir J. E. found trees 

 of one hundred feet high, twenty to twenty-five inches diameter, 

 and with 450 rings of annual growth. The annual rings were 

 of varied thickness, showing that the summers vary considerably 

 in those latitudes. After dinner we drove into town to attend a 

 conversazione at Dr. Warren's. Here were a number of 

 Bostonian doctors, to some of whom I was introduced. One of 



