282 
NOTES OF AN AMERICAN TOUR. 
Should the specimen be taken away, it is to be sincerely 
hoped that it will he secured for our Natural History collec¬ 
tion (British Museum, South Kensington), where it would 
vastly enrich a collection, I am sorry to say, at present either 
greatly behindhand in possessing itself of good typical coal- 
flora fossils of this description, or at all events in its exhibi¬ 
tion and arrangement of the same. 
NOTES OF AN AMERICAN TOUR, 
BY W. P. MARSHALL, M.I.C.E. 
( Continued from paye 211.) 
San Francisco, the capital of the West, stands on the 
shore of a large sheltered inland bay that forms a noble 
harbour, opening to the Pacific Ocean by a side channel that 
leads off at right angles and leaves the harbour quite protected 
from the sea. The entrance of the channel from the sea is 
called Golden Gate, said to be so called from the splendid golden 
sunsets that are seen from the hills of San Francisco, looking 
out over the open sea, which extends clear across to Japan 
at 5,000 miles distance. San Francisco is very hilly, except¬ 
ing the portion alongside the water, and some of the streets 
are too steep for horse traffic, and only workable by the cable 
tramways, which were originated there, and are now very 
extensive. 
The great Palace Hotel in San Francisco is celebrated as 
one of the largest in the world, and is a very fine and complete 
building, with a large centre court 70 feet width and 140 
feet length, open to the top of the building, roofed with glass, 
and having galleries all round at each floor, into which the 
room doors open. This hotel gives a good example of the large 
American hotels, with the important conveniences that they 
contain. In the large entrance hall, besides the general 
business counter at which all the business of the hotel is 
concentrated and conveniently and promptly managed, there 
is the railway counter of a general ticket agent, where tickets 
can be obtained to every part of the country and every infor¬ 
mation is given about travelling; also a telegraph office and a 
railway bookstall, with the inevitable American barber’s shop. 
Railway tickets are not got at the stations as a rule, but are 
obtained at a general ticket agent’s office in a principal hotel 
or in the main street near at hand; this is a great convenience 
