TOUR IN THE UNITED STATES. 191 



when anything touches his feelings, as this spontaneous tribute 

 of the school-children did. He is a very remarkable man of 

 genius, and yet with children as simple as a child. 



I leave Boston with regret, having very much enjoyed being 

 at Dr. G — 's, and among the Cambridge circle. Mr. Prescott 

 (the historian) and Mr. Ticknor are both very pleasant com- 

 panions, as well as very well-informed and literary men. 1 am 

 only sorry I saw so little of them. The best specimen I had 

 of Mr. Prescott was in a morning visit that I paid him. I 

 fortunately found him alone, and an hour ran over before I 

 thought of stirring. Poor man ! Perhaps I interrupted his 

 studies ; but he was so very pleasant and conversable that I 

 could not move off sooner, and I was much surprised, on 

 looking at my watch, to find that time had passed so quickly. 



I am sending home a box of plants. Let them be put in 

 a dry, safe place, or sent to the College. No bad weather as 

 yet. With the exception of a week of rain and wind, it has 

 been charming since my arrival. 



To the Same. 



New York, December 9th, 1849. 



I left Boston for New Haven, Connecticut, where I remained 

 a night and part of a day for the purpose of seeing Yale College, 

 one of the famous seats of science in these parts. I wished 

 also to see Professor Silliman, the distinguished Professor of 

 Chemistry. I found him just going to lecture, and I was glad of 

 the opportunity of hearing him. The lecture was on Meteorites, 

 and very interesting, full of apt illustration, and not without 

 sparks of humour when combating erroneous notions of the origin 

 of these bodies. It is a subject to which the Professor has de- 

 voted much attention, and he once witnessed the fall of a large 

 shower of meteoric stones. He conceives them to be small 

 bodies revolving round the earth as a centre, in very elliptical 

 orbits, coming sometimes extremely near us, and then flying off 

 into space as if they never meant to return. He showed the 

 absurdity of supposing them to come from the moon, or to be 

 aggregations of matter collected in the atmosphere. After 

 lecture I dined with Mr. Dana the geologist, son-in-law of the 

 Professor, who met us at dinner. After a pleasant hour or two, 

 it was time for me to take wing. American railways are not 



