
          Middletown Mar 3, 1828.

My Dear Friend,

I have not had the pleasure of hearing
from you of late. I am aware that your time is 
so much taken up with your pursuits &c that your
distant friends cannot reasonably expect you to write
often. An opportunity of sending to the City induces
me to give you a short account of myself.

A few days since I went to New Haven to see Prof. Silliman
and had an opportunity of hearing him give 2 lectures. 
I need not trouble you with a particular account of him
as a lecturer. His reputation is high and very 
deservedly. I passed the evening at his House
greatly to my satisfaction. He enquired after you
and said he had never seen you. He has 
a manuscript & a beautiful collection of paintings of shells
sent to him for publication in his Journal. Several 
of them it appears to me are the same that have 
already been described by Mr. Barns±. I forget 
the name of the person who sent the MS [manuscript]. The place if
I recollect right is Marietta in Ohio. You can tell 
Mr. Barns he had better see the drawings before 
publication. I advised Silliman to let Mr. Barns see
them and I understood him to say he would write him.

Mr. Shephard the assistant to Silliman is a fine fellow
and bids fair to become an excellent mineralogist.
He is making great preparations for the analysis 
of minerals and has made some progress. He was
about analysing the Mackle

[in margin]
± the MS [manuscript] make no reference whatever to Barns's shells figured
        