the other fire, as the
great agent employed by nature in her work.

"It may well be expected that this hemisphere, which has been least
explored, will yield its full proportion of materials towards a
satisfactory system. Your zealous efforts to share in the contributions
do credit to your love of truth and devotion to the cause of science,
and I wish they may be rewarded with the success they promise, and with
all the personal gratifications to which they entitle you."

Mr. Jefferson (Ex-President United States) sends a note of thanks (Jan.
26th) in the following words: "It is a valuable element towards the
knowledge we wish to obtain of the crust of the globe we inhabit; and,
as crust alone is immediately interesting to us, we are only to guard
against drawing our conclusions deeper than we dig. You are entitled to
the thanks of the lovers of science for the preservation of this fact."

Mr. John Adams (Ex-President United States, Jan. 27th) says: "I thank
you for your memoir on the fossil tree, which is very well written; and
the conjectures on the processes of nature in producing it are plausible
and probable.

"I once lay a week wind-bound in Portland road, in England, and went
often ashore, and ascended the mountain from whence they get all the
Portland stone that they employ in building. In a morning walk with some
of the American passengers from the Lucretia, Captain Calehan, we passed
by a handsome house, at the foot of the hill, with a handsome front yard
before it. Upon the top of one of the posts of this yard lay a fish,
coiled up in a spiral figure, which caught my eye. I stopped and gazed
at it with some curiosity. Presently a person, in the habit and
appearance of a substantial and well-bred English gentleman, appeared at
his door and addressed me. 'Sir, I perceive that your attention is fixed
on my fish. That is a conger eel--a species that abounds in these seas;
we see them repeatedly, at the depth of twelve feet water, lying exactly
in that position. That stone, as it now appears, was dug up from the
bowels of this mountain, at the depth of twenty feet below the surface,
in the midst of the rocks. Now, sir,' said he, 'at the time of the
deluge, these neighboring seas were thrown up into that mountain, and
this fish, lying at the bottom, was thrown up with the rest, and then
petrified, in the very posture in which he lay.'

"I was charmed with the eloquence of this profound philosopher, as well
as w