Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, Louis Agassiz: his life and correspondence, third edition

[414] an important scientific journal, the channel through which, ever since its foundation, European scientific researches have reached America. His son is now professor of chemistry at Yale. One of his sons-in-law, Mr. Shepard, is also chemical professor in the University of South Carolina. Another, Mr. Dana, still a very young man, strikes me as likely to be the most distinguished naturalist of the United States. He was a member of the expedition around the world under the command of Captain Wilkes, and has just published a magnificent volume containing monographs of all the species of polyps and corals, with curious observations on their mode of growth and on the coral islands. I was surprised to find in the collection at New Haven a fine specimen of the great fossil salamander of Oeningen, the Homo diluvii testis of Scheuchzer.

From New Haven I went to New York by steamboat. The Sound, between Long Island and the coast of Connecticut, presents a succession of cheerful towns and villages, with single houses scattered over the country, while magnificent trees overhang the sea; we constantly disturbed numbers of aquatic birds which, at our approach, fluttered up around