in the latitude of Lisbon! I reached Clifton Forge, where I had to stay the night, at 8 p.m., and found the hotel full, and was sent to another-small, dirty, and ruinous. Next morning I was so unlucky as to lose my train by getting into the wrong one, which was standing ready on the line with steam up. The conductor, after seeing my ticket, stopped the train and set me down, telling me that if I walked back quickly I might be in time. But I had a heavy bag to carry, and a mile to walk, and arrived dripping with perspiration to find that the train had gone, and there was no other till the same hour next day. I therefore wired to Mr. Edwards, and spent the day exploring the country for several miles around. Two or three miles up the valley I came to a fine gorge, where there was a good specimen of arched stratification. I came across a thicket of rhododendrons, the first I had seen wild. There were also some tulip trees with dry capsules, and the brilliant red maple in flower, as well as the yellow-flowered spice bush, Benzoin odoriferum. There was an undergrowth of kalmia, and some of the deciduous trees were in leaf, but there were no herbaceous spring flowers and very few showing leaf in the woods.

The next day I left at 7 a.m., passing through a very interesting country, first among iron works in a rather flat, open valley, then along narrow winding valleys, then into a dry valley always rising towards the ridge of the Alleghanies, then through a tunnel into another valley, still going up among woods of firs and oaks, rather small and scraggy, till at 8.30 a.m. we passed the summit level by a tunnel, and soon got into a rather wide, deep valley with a stream flowing west, and at 8.40 reached White Sulphur Springs, in a pleasant basin surrounded by mountains, with a pretty church, neat houses, good roads, and gardens with painted wood fences! the first bit of an attempt at neatness I had seen since leaving Washington. Here were some fine pine trees, and the grand ridges and mountains, wooded to the summits, reminded me of Switzerland, without its great charms-the lowland and upland pastures and snow-capped peaks. Soon the valley widens, the rock becomes a highly inclined schist or slate,

cultivated fields are more numerous, but often still full of tree-stumps. Men are seen ploughing with very small light ploughs, which can turn easily among the stumps; ugly snake fences are present everywhere; queer little wooden huts are dotted about; and ragged, dirty children abound-a regular bit of backwoods life.

Passing through a long tunnel, we come out upon the Greenbriar river, a quiet stream whose greenish waters are full of logs cut in the surrounding mountains and being floated down to the Ohio. At Hinton the New River joins our stream, the valley gradually narrows till we are walled in by grand crags and precipices, there are enormous fallen boulders, and the river foams over ledges and down whirling rapids. We passed a fine lofty point called Hawk's Nest, and soon after reached the Kanahwha river, which is navigable down to the Ohio. Here we saw one of the old-fashioned sternpaddle steamboats; the climate became warmer, a peach tree was in full blossom, and I even saw that rarity in America, a greenhouse attached to a small country house. All down the valley in alluvial flats the Western plane tree (Platanus occidentalis) had a remarkable appearance, its upper half being pure white, exactly as if whitewashed. This is the colour of the young bark before it flakes off, as it does on the trunk and larger limbs. The peculiar appearance is not noticed by Loudon, so perhaps it is not produced in our less sunny climate.

I reached Coalburg at 3 p.m., where Mr. Edwards met me and took me to his pleasant house with a broad verandah in a pretty orchard at the foot of the mountain, which rises in a steep forest-clad slope close behind. The grass of the orchard was full of the beautiful white flowers of the blood-root (Sanguinaria canadensis), together with yellow and blue violets, and there were fine views of the river and high sloping hills, which, together with the tramways and coal trucks on the railway, and here and there the chimneys of a colliery engine, reminded me of some of the South Wales valleys. I spent four days here roaming about the country, seeing my host's fine collection of North American butterflies and his

elaborate drawings of the larvæ at every moult, from their first emergence from the egg up to the pupa stage, which often served to determine otherwise too closely allied species. We had only met once forty years before, but had occasionally corresponded on entomological subjects, and felt quite as old friends. Mr. Edwards had some literary tastes and had a pretty good library, so that in the intervals of work and talk I spent many hours reading. He had lived twenty-five years in this valley, where he had been among the first to work the coal, and was still business manager of some of the mines. He confirmed what Judge Holman had told me about the Irish, who, he said, were industrious and very intelligent and enterprising, many of them rising to high positions. As workmen they are, in his opinion, better than the Welsh, and equal to the Germans. And these are the people we have for a century driven out of their native country by despotic rule and the cruel oppression of absentee landlordism, and still declare to be "incapable of self-government." The force of racial pride, ignorance, and impudence can no further go.

During several drives and walks I saw a good deal of the country and population. The villages and detached houses were usually very poor and untidy, fences and pigsties are built of odd bits of board, and there were hardly any gardens or cultivation of any kind, the result probably of the people being mostly miners and mere temporary residents. In one village, however, where the miners owned their own cottages, these were neat and sometimes pretty, in good repair, and with gardens well attended to. Here, again, the magic of property (or of permanent occupation) turns a hovel into a home, a desert into a garden-as Arthur Young remarked more than a century ago.

On the 13th of April at 8.30 a.m. I bade farewell to Mr. Edwards, his daughter and son, who had made my visit a very agreeable one, and went on to Cincinnati. The journey was very interesting. For a long way it was through a series of small valleys bounded by low vertical bluffs and sandstone, and with many lateral valleys opening out of them, with

wooded slopes above. In the flat valley-bottoms the whitewashed American planes were abundant, and in the villages peach trees were in blossom, but there was no sign of spring foliage in the woods. We then passed through a country of horizontal beds of rock, alternately hard and soft, looking like our Oolite, but really of Silurian age.

I remained in Cincinnati twelve days, met a good many people who were very kind to me, and saw a good deal of the very interesting country around the city. I also had the use of the Cuvier Club, where there was a nice collection of American birds, a library, reading-room, chess-room, etc., equally accessible on Sunday as during the week. Among my first visitors next morning was Mr. Charles Dury, an enthusiastic naturalist and collector, and Mr. R. H. Warder, also fond of natural history. They took me to call on Mr. J. R. Skinner, who showed me some fine arrow-heads of jade, and then took us for a drive round the beautiful suburb of Clifton, where the handsome villas are scattered about a wooded park-like country, with shrubs and wild flowers, but with no fences of any kind, either between the different properties or along the road-sides. This gives a delightfully rural aspect to the whole place, and enables every one to enjoy an uninterrupted view over the hills and valleys, and also to walk across in any direction that he may be going. Returning, Mr. Skinner asked me to dine with him, and talked about spiritualism, pyramid and Bible measures, etc., etc. For two hours he poured out Hebrew names and mystic numbers, deducing, and all kinds of geometrical data and measures from Hebrew biblical names. He seemed to be a regular paradoxer," and afterwards gave me many papers he had published, but I was quite unable to follow them, or to decide whether or not there was anything of value in them. In all other subjects he was a pleasant companion, interested in local antiquities, and an enthusiastic lover of native birds. called on me.

In the evening Dr. H— and Dr. L The former stayed an hour and a half, a great talker, mostly about himself, his sayings and thinkings, his philosophy, his admiration of Herbert Spencer, his recollection of Sir Charles

Lyell, etc., etc. On Saturday, May 16, I went with Mr. Skinner to meet Mr. Warder at Valley Junction, about twenty miles below Cincinnati, and he drove us in a light waggon a few miles to see some old Indian mounds. One very large tumulus, about twenty-five feet high, had been opened by a pit in the centre down to the ground level. At a farmhouse near we found that the farmer had opened it, had found a skeleton, two copper bracelets, several large stone weapons and tools, some very finely worked, and a lump of pure graphite. Mr. Skinner thought that graphite had never been found before in the mounds. On the way back we saw a very large elongate mound, covered with trees and close to a village. The valley of the Ohio was here very pleasant, with its rich fields and low wooded hills of varied outline. Many birds were seen, the brown thrush, red-winged blackbird, and many others, all well known to my companions. The American Judas tree (Cercis canadensis) was in full flower and very abundant, and the little spring beauty (Claytonia virginiana) formed sheets of pale pink blossoms on the skirts of the woods. We saw a few patches of virgin forest on the hills, and here and there a rather fine tree, but these are always scarce.

The following day being very wet, our excursion to the Madisonville Cemeteries was delayed a week. But on Sunday, the 24th, Dr. Dunn took me in his buggy, accompanied by several other friends in a carriage, for a long drive to the Turner group of mounds, which are very extensive, but have been ploughed over. Near them is the cemetery, consisting of a great number of small mounds in a wood, many of which have been opened, and bones, with numbers of stone weapons, ornaments, etc., found in them. Circular plates of mica are common here. On the way back we visited a field where quantities of pottery, flints, bones, etc., have been found near to a small oval mound. The country we passed through was very pleasant, and some of it quite picturesque, with swelling hills, ridges, and valleys, often finely wooded and park-like.

During the week preceding this excursion I had spent