ous emigrants for the Mississippi valley I crossed the mountains and arriving at the verge of habitations we prepared to enter the wilderness and encamped at the eastern base of the Cumberland mountain.

After taking repast it was concluded a severe storm was near at hand and with pine torches we commenced ascending half up the mountain that night, and between 10 P. M., and 3 A. M., we took rest and again decamping we reached the summit at sun rise, having through the night got in advance of above a hundred emigrant camp fires.

Whilst preparing breakfast we sent back six horses to aid the nearest ascending team as was the custom and soon the stranger crowd increased on the brow of the mountain among whom sat a woman and her daughter bitterly weeping because their pack horse had fallen dead.

The company present at once contributed money to buy and present them another horse and the lowering sky invited all to descend to the high table plain stretching as far as sight could reach.

Whilst the conductors were tying brushy saplings under the axles and locking all the wheels of every vehiclee besides placing four men on each side holding ropes, the dangerous descent was commenced and I went forward to see the grave of the valiant and gigantic Spencer who had guarded many emigrants across these mountains.

His monument was a vast natural ashler or rock standing 30 or 40 feet in heigth, from the top of which he fell and was scalped by an Indian that lay concealed with his rifle and shot whilst Spencer was surveying the pass.

Looking to the top of the rock I saw one of our own pioneers composedly shaving himself, without soap or water, to win a small wager.

There were many Indians around clothed with single blankets and moccasins and anxious to sell bear meat, venison and wild turkeys and I found that they had not horns and tails as my fancy in earlier years had attached to them, but still I could not taste what had been carried on their backs.

At sundown the fires were made in an extensive crab orchard where were no large forest trees and during supper the sky was overspread with lurid continuous flashes while the mutterings of thunder indicated the equinoctial storm was approaching.

Soon the reverberations echoing from the mountains to the valleys and back again became ceaseless and the crashings of the neighboring forests showed the storm had come.

The hail and rain dashed along by fitful starts, the fires were extinguished and the camps cast down, while women, children and dogs hastened by the light of the flashing clouds to the central parts of the encampment, but their screams were unheard amidst the roar of the storm for above an hour and then the joyful news flew round that none were injured.

This table plain is about 30 miles in width stretching across the state and everywhere underlaid with stratified horizontal sand stone strongly imbued with chalybiate constituents.

During very dry seasons the intersticial openings are deprived of water and gas of different qualities fills its place which being driven out on the accession of rains floats along the surface and nourishes green slippery mosses very detrimental to health.

After leaving this table plain we descended to an. other level about 15 miles broad, whose western escarpments overlooks the horizontal lime stratum

1000 feet in thickness and covered with rich earth and heavy forests over a surface of 50,000 to 60,000 square miles in continuous extent.

We soon took up our quarters within the borders of Kentucky, procuring salt, coffee, hog meat and grain from Pioneers of that country and after the equinoctial storm of March, 1807, we retired to lower parts of the great valley before us.

'The winter log cabins we had constructed were all unroofed by the storm of March and I was awakened by a pelting of hail and rain amidst a roar of the elements impossible to be described!

The heavy forest around us for half a mile in breadth was torn and totally prostrated.

The escape of all our people and live stock seemed miraculous and in no instance did any boards or other timber happen to fall within the cabins that were levelled to the height of about six feet.

When severe storms like this occur passing Northeastward it is common for the gales along the Atlantic coast to pursue the opposite course and vice versa. It was in the next year 1808 a branch of a terrific hurricane passed within my view, Smith county, Tenn., doing great damage in its passage from the Sabine by the Palmyra bend of the Mississippi and crossing the Yazoo entered Tenessee passing near Columbia, thence by Sparta and the Crab Orchard its path passed near Knoxville and up the Hofston valley to the Alleghany Mountains.

At Knoxville by day light it appeared, in passing, to be a black mountain of moving brushwood, leaves and other sub-tances which were borne along at the rate of 100 to 120 miles per hour.

The forests were levelled and trees apparently twisted off killing many animals and in the vicinage of Knoxville eight persons were killed.

Most of the hurricanes from the South follow the track of this one.

On the 20th December of that year Fahrenheit's thermometer near Nashville rose from the extreme point of 8 degrees above zero to 40 degrees, when it commenced snowing and up to 24th the depth increased to 11 inches.

Three years before that snow fell to the depth of 36 inches in high districts of the same parallel eastward and remained for months, but on the occasion referred to storms of rain attended by thunder and lightning dissolved the snow and on the 28th of December a fearful flood spread through the entire State.

The Cumberland river at Nashville rose seventytwo feet in perpendicular measure from low water mark and the Tenessee river 56 feet at the Suck and thirty-six, above and below that point, where the channel averages near half a mile in breadth.

The rains thunders and lightning continuing until the 1st of January 1809 the waters were highest on the 24, 34 and 4th since which in 1827 March, the rise was 66 feet near Nashville and the Tenessee at the Suck rose 50 feet, the Tuscaloosa 52 feet as reported and the Ohio about 50 feet though this river afterwards rose 62 feet at Cincinnati.

In the year 1793 these rivers rose still higher, the Cumberland at Nashville being 76 feet and the rest in proportion, but I would remark that now, by clearing, the timbers off the banks, the channels have be. come widened and the waters spreading on the first flats run rapidly forward, without the impediments once interposed from dense forests of timber and reeds.

In 1829-30 the waters of the Ohio, Cumberland and Tenessee caused a great rise in the Mississippi,

the rise in the Cumberland being about 56 feet at that time and usually such freshets occur during the winter months after the prevalence of North-eastern winds and black snow-clouds, are met by heavy thunder clouds from the South.

In Tenessee I have seen the snow on the plains in 1843 eighteen inches deep and in 1840 in the mountains thirty-six inches before it had settled compactly, but the average annual fall of snow would not exceed three inches on the plains and six inches upon mountainous ranges, while the mean fall of snow and rain water in a series of years is thirty-six inches.

Prior to the cutting down of forests and the arundinaceous growth the mean fall of rain and snow in the same regions was forty-four inches and fortyeight or fifty in certain districts.

The quantity of rain has seriously diminished, but cannot decrease in the same ratio for time to come and the present supply is sufficient.

The mean temperature since the settlement of the country has become much colder in winter, while the sunmers are warmer, the comparison being 96 against 90 degrees; and of cold, zero against 8 degrees above that point.

The entire month of March 1843 had a mean temperature in the parallel of 360 of thirty-one and a half degrees of Farenheit being the coldest March ever known there.

The three cold days of February 1835 in the same latitude killed oak forests in the Cumberland Mountains and I will here give the temperature along an east and west line from Nashville across the Alleghanies.

At the water edge of the Cumberland river the degree below zero was 18 and on the cliff at Nashville 20 degrees, 70 miles eastward 26 and on the summit of the Cumberland Mountain 30 and in the valley at its eastern base 17, at Knoxville 40 miles east 11; and at Saltville a little north-eastward 20, at Mount Airy 14, at Wytheville 11, at Christiansburgh on the Alleghany 12, and at the eastern base of the Blue Ridge the cold was only 5 degrees below zero.

I observed that as the cold ranged down from 10 to 20 below Zero a large amount of icicular frost fell giving the sky a deep cerulian blue, such as I had never before seen.

When the atmosphere is cooling or heating so as to pass the degree of temperature in running water a rapid evaporation happens within the range of 12 degrees above and below.

If the temperature of the air be changed either up or down beyond this, rain or hail is apt to fall, within a range of about 12 degrees, but if exceeding this either heating or cooling, again commences rapid evaporation within certain variable limits and under extreme cold the air expels vapor.

This would lead to a supposition that always in the air are strata having aptitudes for expelling as well as receiving more or less moisture.

Sometimes snow is rapidly evaporated without passing into the prior condition of water and indeed unless this were true the polar regions would eventually acquire the main share of all water by icy chains.

The delta of the Mississippi river is well adapted for extensive evaporation containing as it does a triangular area of alluvian 150 miles on every line and above the delta along the river for 500 miles the flats exceed 40 miles in width mostly subject to inundation during high water.

The fogs and clouds commonly move northward

or north-eastward resupplying the drainage of half a milion of square miles, returning all the while by the river channels but chiefly from January till July into the main river.

In giving these data I intend it to be inferred that the variations of temperature and the concomitant actions of evaporation and condensation do mainly produce storms and give order and direction to their movements over these very extensive regions.

I do not esteem the electro-magnetic impulses, nor light, nor heat, nor the repletive or dispersive apti. tudes of matter to be materialized being only the property manifestations arising under various conditions of substantive atoms.

The exercise of the laws or fixed relations of these properties do however, like what is called Physiological functions, give specifie results among all the atoms or masses subjected to their control either on a small or larger scale.

I imagine these properties in regulating the joint dependencies of Solar and Terrene matter do pass in pyramidal columns from one of these bodies to the other in constant exchanges not only for yielding storm effects here, but also for subserving much more important ends both of special and of general utility in the material and in the moral universe.

In the great valley referred to it is singular that local storms are greatly less frequent during the last twenty-five years than in a like period before, while the hurricanes flowing from the Mexican Gulf towards the Northern lakes are not much diminished in frequency or in violence.

In many places I have compared the mounds of up-rooted forests exhibiting by their condition five and six generations on the same fields, indicating that not less than five hundred to one thousend years have elapsed during which storms prostrated trees apparently as in the present times.

In 1809 I saw two local storms of great severity and one without wind which over a space of about 2000 acres poured down hail as large as rifle bullets to the depth of about three inches ending with copious rain that washed it into heaps at low places where it lay for months.

In 1810 for some days I saw dark spots in the clear sky, moving along somewhat faster than common clouds, giving a frying sound like sand under gently breaking waves along shore and before leaving my view glittering rain streams from all round ran towards the centre, after which a clouded appearance was presented before a total disappearance, without raining on the ground.

Such indications denote dry weather, but at the time referred to a tornado succeeded, throwing down several inches in depth of large hail and so much rain that in hollows of the hills many trees torn up were washed with masses of earth and stones to the of the hills where yet in Smith county the heaps foot may be seen.

Being in the woods and anticipating a severe blow from the manner in which the clouds collected from every course, I took refuge in a cavern around which fell the larger share of adjacent trees without any distinguishing sound from their crash, because of the winds and the thunders and the rumbling tremors of the ground.

In another local storm that passed among short black locust timber I counted about a dozen stricken, by lightning killing several cattle and hogs.

It is strange that in a country abounding with heavy beech forests I never saw or heard of a green

beech tree being struck by lightning while no other species of tree is exempted.

I observed a local settling of clouds for hours around Huntsville on one occasion until at last hundreds of streams of lightning shot towards the earth with reports like rifles often striking trees, houses and the ground and after half an hour the clouds not moving off became exhausted and a clear sky appeared.

Before closing I will mention one or two extended hurricanes, the first leaving the Sabine passed near Palmyra and across the Mississippi around New Madrid and thence crossing the country eastward blew down the little town of Charlotte in Tenessee excepting one large house in which the people had taken refuge on hearing its approach.

The Court House of brick was torn to the foundations and the records scattered for 60 miles eastward; a Mr. Colier who was sleeping in it felt the house crumbling to pieces and found himself sailing along holding to his bed until at the distance of a few hundred yards he struck the ground having two limbs fractured.

I saw this flaming cloud as it passed near twenty miles off and going onward it razed the houses of the town called Shelbyville, Court House and all, except a large hotel in which the people had sought safety, though six or seven persons were killed and others wounded.

A gentleman leaping from his office that was being lifted up was killed by a flying door and his companion was carried by the wind a hundred yards and seizing a standing brushwood, held on till the wind abated.

In 1840 near the Alleghany mountain in the evening a black cloud 12 miles off covered with continuous streams of lightning and flying with confused motion at the rate of about sixty miles per hour was carefully observed by myself and others.

I gave it as my opinion that it was the remains of a gulf hurricane which had destroyed more lives than any storms that had ever ascended the Mississippi Valley and it was indeed, the storm which passing Natchez the day before had slain two hundred people besides wounding many and doing much damage on its path to Western Tenessee and thence eastward it reached the summit of the Cumberland Mountain after two or three abortive efforts to cross and leaping from the summit done no damage till it struck the ground 10 miles from that point. Space will not allow further details.

E Meriam, Esq.,-Dear Sir:-Yours of 24th ult. is received; you ask are the earthquakes in western Tennesee local or connected with some remote volcanic action?

I think the surrounding alluvian plain of New Madrid has a substratum containing the immediate causes of earthquakes in that region, but I infer the remote exciting influences are to be searched for in the tropical districts of central America.

I witnessed flakes of semi-bituminous matter rising to the water's surface during an earthquake at little Prarie in (1829 I think it was) near New Madrid.

The town of New Madrid stands upon original soil and is almost the only part of the western bank of the river, from the Ohio to the Gulf, which is not of the modern alluvian formation.

The River once run west of the Town and in

changing its channel left an island of irregular form at that place.

The Mississippi from the Missouri downward bears against its Eastern bank washing away and transferring to the opposite side the undulating country stretching fifty or sixty miles along the Eastern side of its main current.

Most of this undulating district lies over deep masses of quick-sands saturated with water from the River and its tributaries-quicksands and smoke of sulphureous smell, often burst forth in the prairies near New Madrid, but these I think of local origin depending on certain chemical changes occurring below-such evolutions shake most when the River has overflowed.

In some places the submerged timbers, by silification, compose a substance well adapted to the use of hones or whetstones.

I would conjecture that a strong electro magnetic current of forces, from the Southwestern toward the North-Eastern mountains, is always crossing the watery sands of this valley.

These wet quick sands are not less than one thou. sand feet in depth and may average 60 to 100 miles in width walled in, on the East, by cliffy horizontal stratified beds of old secondary limestone, at some places however interrupted by sandstone and distorted strata, as if the disturbing force had been upheaving.

Below the sandstone and limestone slaty-structures of great thickness are known to exist and probably continue across the valley, the quicksands there supplying the deficiency of limestone and hard sand

stone.

I think out of this heated slate-structure exudes bituminous mineral springs and oils which in the watery sands finding a "specific level" is now, through slow chemical processes, forming immense fields of mine, al-coal, embracing in its bed many vegetable and animal substances of recent growth,

At the grand Gulf where sandstone is being formed, at some distant day may perhaps be found imbedded not Saurian skeletons, but steam boats with assorted cargoes buried in the present channel six hundred feet deep and again gradually upraised may, long hence, appear exposed to the light of day.

The land of the best sugar cane, has so much bituminous oils in it, as to soil blue cloth and the yearly deposits may be traced downward until from pressure, age or other ancient causes they now present layers not thicker than sheets of paper.

From the valley of the Mississippi proper extends Eastward a sheet of limestone averaging one thousand feet in thickness, stratified and almost horizontal, but cut above ground by numerous water channels, even to the range of the Cumberland mountains and other cotei minous ranges of the Alleghanies.

Near these mountains the same lime strata split by some great force has been raised many hundred feet bove the plain country presenting a cliffy barrier, having deep lateral fissures from which the mountain streams disembogue their waters.

Above the table limestone--benches of the same mountains, are massive Lime rocks and sandstone evidently never composed through alluvian or diluvian agencies, but framed outside of water beds under cold and by turns hot currents of winds and showering ice and waters of which our present tranquil elements afford no examples upon this earth.

It is geologically worthy of notice-that amidst all the changes of the crust of this region, the very

same valleys and mountains with waters or ice and vapors flowing along them have continuously existed.

The Cumberland and its appending chains along a course of 500 miles, observed at many crossings by me, are found to have a general curvature, the convex side of which is toward the South-east; but the most of the curve was induced by cross fractures of the mountain fifty or more miles apart in the great rage, and 10 or 20 miles apart in the lesser ranges.

Where these fractures appear the rocks are broken and more or less separated in line, on the South-east escarpments, but on the western sides are compressed into sharp curves or crushed into fine fragments all executed at once and forming the surface with little variation from its present state.

At these crushed points currents of water and ice at various times crossed from the North-west bearing the fragments South-eastward into the valleys and according to the present courses of running waters, these fragments were borne along down

stream.

This is demonstrable by the fragments proper and peculiar to any break of the mountains being always found in the valley opposite and thence along the streams and mountain sides down the present streams.

Very often boulders of great size were forced over low hills of the valleys, possibly from being connected with floating ice, but after being deposited, there remain, or are found down stream at such point as the latest agencies might convey them.

These remarks are not of course designed to have application to cosmogenic or other appliances at work prior to the stratification of rocks in general.

I cannot but believe that the solidification of the world's interior mass, must have been a sudden work, perhaps, resembling the production of meteoric stones in spaces above our denser atmosphere.

Once solidified it never since has been dissolved, notwithstanding its air, waters and entire chemical crust must have passed through several general and many important partial mutations.

It is almost certain that whilst rivers flowed along channels of this region, the material composing stratified limsstone was deposited and probably some waters frozen receiving such deposits from a disturbed and vast vapory mass above, afterwards when the ice was dissolved, left the immense cavernous channels of the West.

At any rate the perpendicular cliffy or lofty limestone banks of many Western rivers denote that their waters conveyed away the deep unconcentrated lime deposits before they assumed their present hard

ness.

Besides, the successive deposits of vegetable and animal organic remains being found on the surfaces of lamina, at long successive dates, shows that, after each few feet of lime deposit was made, other changes occurred destroying life many times in succession.

It is also clear that in the earlier stages of organic being not only was the saline qualities extensively diffused but that in many places the quantity, for long intervals, was very attenuated in whatever medium contained the supply.

That at the special times when trilobites and many other organic beings were occupants of different surfaces, a comparative quiescence of the chemical agencies had arrived at some points of the earth's surface, admits of little dispute.

I should however suspect that these periodic changes were caused either whilst the earth's perehelions

were quitting its cometary wanderings or else some foreign heliacal mass, approaching our system so as to elevate the waters and the most suscep able chemical superstructure of the world, caused frequent changes of its Ecliptic, and thereby rapid successions of life and death among the early animals of the North andhe South climates.

Speculative as such suggestions may seem, they will soon command grave enquiry, if I be not mistaken in the results of some of the latest astronomical researches.

In the field of chemical action subsisting around the earth, more or less obedient to solar and lunar influences and greatly affecting the life and sound health of animated creatures, much remains for scientific investigation.

I have seen at periodic times immense generations of insects peculiar to certain localities and also special plants, fruits and trees, passing through successions of flourishing lite all of which reached periods of decay and of epidemic disease and death.

Do poisonous atmospheres move around the earth under the direction of the stable laws imposed by lunar and solar influence without being worthy of sanatory attention ?

But a few years elapse during which the air is nearly all transferred, with various admixtures of foreign gazeous and other substances, around the earth westwardly; nor does a century pass away without the mass of watery elements also making a revolution around the earth by atmospheric, tidal oceanic currents and other available means of transfer.

The political and social state thrives not, if the physiologic condition is the prey of extensive maladies.

Agricultural chemistry and solutions of epidemic causes of disease are receiving and must receive, examinations adapted to the state and condition of new eras in society.

Perhaps no where on the globe is found so large an area based on the primeval unbroken deposits as that between the great Lakes and the Mexican Gulf, the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghany Ridge.

The variety of soils and climate, of vegetable and animal life, all appear new and vigorous, and at many points the present forests are the first which have grown, while in some districts are evidences that five or six aged generations of trees succeeded one another.

On limestone plains of most recent formation the greatest commixture of the vegetating kingdom occurs, and in progress of time, those plants and trees to which the soil and climate are best adapted, eradicate and take exclusive possession from the others.

This is especially observable along the Gulf and Florida coasts and interior districts, where immense animal and vegetable deposits under shallow fresh waters compose new rocks and superincumbent soils, richly inbued with lime in a softened condition.

In these districts the animaculous and zoophitic organities in their collective capacity effect gigantic productions preparatory to higher orders of life.

You ask whence comes the germs that rapidly give varieties of timber to the open prairies of the West?

I cannot determine that question, not having a sufficiency of facts connected with the subject before

me.

I do not call an organization, that inevitably results from certain states of matter, "spontaneous."

I infer that the properties of inanimate globes, reactive upon each other, may originate other globes according to methodized relations implanted by the intelligent author of the Universe.

I know that in the vegetating and in the animal organizations, certain male and female aptitudes exist for procreation of kindred offspring.

At some time every organic being had its incipient state and must reach the time of dissolution, and I know not a reason why new organic products might not be as well now created in our theatre of things, as occurrences of like kind in later cosmogenic localities of the skies.

The whole phenomena of parasitic and engrafted and mongrel varieties of species present subjects for inquiry by no means prohibited by the Mosaic record of peopling the earth.

At that time the much greater design, had not displayed to our moral world, the fact of the regeneration by revivification of the human body, and in the future "things no less startling" are on the wing for developement.

I have seen no evidence that the African race may not have been originated after Noah's Deluge, by the Author of the Adamic Creation.

Nor, after all the human race shall have become extinct under the fixed Astronomic laws controlling our solar system, is there any sound reason for supposing that the Benificient Ruler of all, may not cause this field of his vineyard, so well adapted to the labors of reason, again to be inhabited by conceptive animals as well as by a race having capacities of rationality such as man now has.

Be this as it may there is no scriptural annunciation or any revelation proving that the Creator at any time will deprive himself of the power of its exercise for effecting utilitarian objects suited to the exigencies of the moral system every where prevalent in the Universe.

It is curious that the grub-worm from which is made the chrysalis for the June bug, sometimes, in decayed moist timber, will be found dead with a vcgetative plant or sprout arising from the inner part of the body, back of the head.

I often heard that various shrubs had been so found generating and I was surprised at finding two of them myself, the worm being entire and the plant stems above an inch in length resembled the tender bean stem a few days after sprouting.

I came to no conclusion about it, being opposed to admitting that any new organizations have arisen since the Adamic creation.

I have wittnessed in wild meadows and cultivated swampy lands annual and extensive changes in grasses and plants and after cutting down forests have been unable to guess what trees would newly appear, unless first practically acquainted with the habits of such lands in the vicinity.

Very often new growths entirely, spring up from recently cleared forest lands and the last being cut away, after twenty or thirty years growth, still a different class of trees will appear, but it is said the primeval families will arise after many successions upon all lands.

I have in no instance seen a tree or plant spring forth which may not elsewhere be found of like species but, in the latest formed lands of the Floridas a strange mixing of Northern and Southern trees and plants may be observed.

In the Mammoth Cave are crawfish and a small smooth skinned fish without eyes, such organs in those dark recesses not being necessary for animal comforts.

If any new animal beings have been created on the earth within the last six thousand years I should still conclude with Mr. Lyell that nature is exceedingly economical in affording such specimens.

The subject has never yet been examined with that variety of experiment and observation applied to many less interesting questions.

The ancient Microbeons "the long livers" were succeeded by the Arabian Alchemists in the same regions and it is far more certain that lives were very prolonged than that metals were transmuted as was idly supposed.

Yet under their alchemical mystics appears hidden an ancient knowledge of magnetic polarity and certain chemical and vitalizing effects which might yet be worthy of careful experiments.

Vital organization negatives the electro-dispersive tendencies as well as the attractive qualities of atomic properties, to a very strong extent, and it seems to ne probable, that imitations of the same neutralizing charcter may vivify certain atomic combinations which previously had no life.

The Magical Zodiac destroyed by the Epileptic Cambyses was supposed to possess powers for extending life, if not for originating energies not common to inert particles of matter, and to this Homer, 1100 years before Christ, alludes as the directive agency which could guide the ships amidst storms and darkness.

I have observed that strong impulses upon the mother's mind during gestation will cause special impresses to be made upon the fœtus during the first six months of pregnancy, either implanting peculiarities upon its intellect or affixing imprints of sensible objects upon its physical structure.

A lady of this vicinity hearing her husband was slain by Indians at his camp after being shot through the knee, became insane at the news and her offspring some months afterwards was found to have deep indentations upon both sides of the knee, with scarlet lines and warts representing blood trickling from the imaginary wounds down the leg.

I have observed too that pioneer hunters acquire peculiar motions of the muscles and by failing to exercise the higher energies of intellect during several generations, those portions of brain proper to the higher pursuits of reason, remain undeveloped to a great extent, so that a low retreating forehead with hair reaching near the brows is one result.

I knew a tribe of hogs which for thirty years had fed among heated ashes, generation after generation, until all the offspring acquired hard long claws, like eagles, turned upward, both hoofs and dewclaws.

The race was a few years since killed and are now extinct at the place.

I need not multiply examples of such mutations of structure, since the vegetable and the farm domestic animals afford specimens of constitutional change of color and of habits and of structure to every observer, yet I am firmly persuaded that all such variations are confined within certain fixed latitudes or contingent "circles of rule" which may not be transgres

sed.

I think experiments of the daguerreotype impresses continued upon germinating seeds and young plants, together with the action of magnetism equally surrounding and neutralizing ordinary gravity and chemical impressions, might exhibit some curious results in regard to variations of functions and organisins.

The germ in the egg, and every foetal creature, not only have innate functions but receive exterior aid from the living matrix or from chemical appliances during the incubescent condition.

Every ovarian state of individuality is parasitic, usuriously claiming subsistence, from the parental, as well as from other adventitious sources of support.

In Zoophitic and other lowest grades of organization the surrounding matter is appropriated with very slight dimunutions of its chemical liteless apti. tudes, and when bodies still living or lately deprived of life are changed into myriads of animalculous worms, whence do these insects have character ?

You perceive after my long desultory letter is closing that no satisfactory reply is given to your enquiries respecting the earthquake regions of Tennesee nor in regard to the origin of trees and of plants over the great barrens and prairies of the

west.

I have then, merely made some suggestions in yankee fashion, instead of answering what I do not know.

I

In regard to your question whether in the sandstone plains of the Cumberland Mountains the bridge-like sound from carriages passing over may not arise from cavernous openings below? answer, no, because caverns rarely are found in sandstone formations and the sound is better accounted for by the fact that their lamina in many places laterally compressed are sprung into slightly arched form, and in dry times no water fills the interposing spaces.

The strongly feruginous character of the sandstone also adds to the capacity for giving out sounds; I observed however at one place where the arching sand-rocks overlay a coal stratum of unknown. depth, within three miles of steam navigation on the Tennessee river, that a horse passing over causes a rumbling sound which alarmed me when passing over it in the dark for the first time.

The people stated there was a great coal bed below and specimens from the vicinity were shown of excellent quality and yet it was neither bituminous nor was it anthracite coal of the ordinary kind.

In that vicinity are inexhaustible mines of iron ore which may be quarried, lying in flakes of reddish color like red sand stone and requiring no washing or fluxing tor furnace work.

Higher up the river are cliffs of ore 80 per cent in richness and for miles along the valley the pine forests stand over great depths of clean pure black sand containing from 15 to 75 per cent of pure iron the sottest and most maleable and tenaceous I have ever used.

Lower down, the projected railwav, (130 miles long from Chatanooga to Nashville) will pass through an extensive coal field reported to me eight feet in thickness.

As to the Cavern about which you inquire near Columbia Tennessee, newly discovered. I know nothing, besides the newspaper account representing its extent to be like that of the Mammoth Cave.

The Sauda Cave on the Tennessee river and the Big-bone Cave in Warren county contain great quantities of saltpetre earth and many human and other bones.

From the latter was taken the skeleton of a huge animal shaped like a bear, the fore paws of immense size and the spine had joints 10 or 12 inches in di

ameter.

Near this skeleton in the nitrons earth were the preserved bodies of an Indian male and female, their arms einbracing each other and each having a separate matting-woven-cover besides a larger ceremental garment around both.

I saw a portion of the matting abou: 1812 and one of the large bones-the matting or cloth was made of Paupau bark and strippings of feathers well woven and carded on one side so as to have a velvetine appearance.

Col. Mathas found in another cavern a very large Indian man perfectly preserved in nitrous mould and having very long black hair like those first named. In the Mammoth Cave I have heard was found the preserved body of a sinall woman and of a child.

Usually many bones, earthen pots and other Indian relics are found in caves.

One that had a fancy to examine caverns might long employ himself in Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky; as for myself I never had much liking for such houses.

That people who interred their dead in conic mounds over all sections of the Mississippi valley I think did not much reside in caverns.

They reared Indian corn, eat the wild artichoke and perhaps the wild Irish potato, nuts, acorns, the tomato and used the wild tobacco and sum ac for smoking.

They resided in villages near which the corn grounds of the community were cultivated and com. mon fish ries and muscle gathering were carefully managed.

Some pieces of native copper badly hammered they used for ornaments as well as pearly portions of the muscle shell-some beads were made of the fossil apiocrinites and anklets of the bones of the beaver and the deer-sun dried bricks were rarely used for the flooring of the Council House and usually their earthen pots bear the impress of ears of corn being

From the Boston Transcript.
Artesian Wells.

An experiment is now making at East Boston, on a grand scale, to determine a point of immense importance to the present and future interest of that thriving section of the metropolis, viz.: whether a sufficient quantity of potable water ean be obtained, to supply the necessities of the inhabitants, by boring into the earth. Believing that the details of the operation may be gratifying to others, as they are to myself, this paper at your disposal.

The locality on which the work of penetration to a depth never before attempted in New England, is going on, is on the easterly part of East Boston, above the margin of the marsh, beyond the settlement. A few houses only are in the neighborhood. A tramed building was erected in the begining, and an excellent steam engine set, up with various kinds of appended apparatus to conduct the labor with economical facility. Mr. Higgins, the Engineer, already tamiliar with the business, having sunk many Artesian wells in the city to eighty, ninety, and one hundred feet, has devised a new instrument for drilling down through all opposition, unlike any tool in ordinary use for the same purpose. He has abandoned the common earth augur, the handle of which is lengthened from time to time by locking on a succession of iron rods, turned by a winch and by hand power. His invention is essentially as follows: a cast iron tube, eight inches in diameter, ten feet, or thereabouts, in length is armed at one end with two prodigiously strong chisels; and just above them is an ingeniously devised valve. At the other extremity is a wrought iron handle, fastened to which is a stout, short linked iron chain, to raise it up and down. When in action, it operates upon the principle of a common chopping knife, so familiar in mince pie manipulalations. The engine raises and then lets it fall, like the perpendicular movement of a dasher in the obselete method of churning butter. As the bits of stone or other materials accumulate every time the massive tube drops, they are forced up through the the tube, and retained. Finally, when enough has been chopped to fill the cylinder of the drill,-the name of it, the engine draws it to the surface to be emptied. The cost of the one Mr. Higgins is laboring with, was six hundred dollars.

Before resorting to this unique contrivance at all, -an ordinary well was dug 140 feet-to a stratum of hard, compact gravel interspeased with waterworn stone, of various sizes. On this Mr. Higgins set a cast-iron tube of ten inches diameter-and another on the top of that, secured by water-tight joints, and so on to the very outlet above ground.— This long, ponderous cylinder, is carefully braced on the outside all the way, to keep it exactly perpendicular, and within it the mighty battering ram is let down and set in motion, against the realm of Pluto. As fast as the hole was deepened, the weight of the superincumbent pipe, pressed down farther, paring the sides as it goes. All accumulation from that source, with its own chips, were secered by the valve. After passing ten feet of the mixture described, the instrument struck a hard blue slate stone,

through which Mr. Higgins urged his way at the average rate of six feet a day, for 145 feet. Next, he came upon a bed of talc, of a greenish gray color, greasy to the the touch, one variety being recognized among tailors, under the name of French chalk, and used for marking on cloth the course of the shears.

Finally on Saturday evening last the cutter penetrated right into that strattum-making the entire depth at that date-303 feet. The tube rests on slate, by which it is sustained-and water, soft and agreeable in flavor, rises in it to the height of 200 feet; propably it comes from between the seams and fractures of the rock, since none can be possibly forced in laterally.

A singular accident occurred last week, the relation of which may be of service to those engaged in a similar undertaking. An Irishman, whose duty it was to tend the brake-and ease the drill down slowly, neglected the lever for an instant, when down run the whole, embracing a chain 300 feet in length, with tremendous velocity, the last end flying from the barrel around which it was wound. The momentum wedged it into the long lonely tube as snugly as though it had been driven in with a piston. By patient efforts from Tuesday till Saturday, a link was luckily caught with a fish-hook. Cautiously drawing the line hand over hand, the chain was ultimately recov cred, when there was a singular and unlooked for difficulty. Some mischievous fellow had dropped in what mechanics call a cold chisel, of hardened steel, six inches of which was broken of by the cutters of the drill, and brought up by the faithful valve. The other part, some two or three inches long, by half an inch square, being still at the bottom, a small magnet was sent down on a message, but brought up nothing but splinters. Mr. Higgins concluded to wait till Monday, (to day) and then drop in one of the largest magnets to be procured, entertaining no doubts in regard to the feasibility of bringing out the obtrusive tool.

Mr. Higgins intends to persevere in wending his way into the interior, as long as means are provided for doing so,-hoping, as your humble servant does, that the scheme may not be abandoned, even if they reach the depth of 3000 feet without striking a fountain of an extraordinary character. If he succeeds, and, as at the well of Grenelle, the water should rise to an altitude of 100 feet above the surface in a never-failing volume-it would be the wonder of of the North, and the marvel of American Philosophers. Respectfully, yours. J. V. C. S.

Ventilation.

To W. H. STarr, Esq.,

Dear Sir:-I notice in your paper of the 26th ult., a paragraph headed “ Importance of good ventilation," copied from an English paper.

The ventilation of an apartment must be in conformity with the temperature of the atmosphere of that apartment.

Formerly, in New England, it was the custom to erect meeting houses on high ground, these buildings were not furnished with either stoves or fire places, ministers who preached in these meeting houses were healthy and long lived.

The practice in New England, in this, has changed within the last forty years. Church edifices are now furnished with stoves, and ministers are less healthy, and shorter lived than their predecessors.

The labor of speaking in a crowded heated room,

is far greater than the labor of speaking in a cold

room.

Sound is peculiar in its force and powers. Capt. Parry, during one of his Arctic voyages, was on shore in a very high Northern latitude during a calm, and could distinctly hear the common conversation of his men a mile distant. Capt. Parry wintered in the same latitude with the ships Hecla and Griper, and during the coldest weather, the labor of clearing the ice and moisture from the timber about the births where the men slept, was great, in consequence of the condensing by great cold the vapor produced by the breath of the men. The windows of a room twenty feet square become frosted during a single night in very cold weather, by the vapor of the breath of one person. In a clear cold morning the vapor of the breath of a person may be seen at a considerable distance as it passes from the mouth and nostrils, this vapor becomes frosted in cold weather, and may often be seen on the hair that hangs around the face, or on the garments that happen to come in contact with the breath. These facts show that the vapor which arises from the human breath is highly charged with moisture, and if from one person so great a quantity is prodcced in a single night, an estimate may be easily formed of the aggregate pro. duced in a heated apartment from the breath of 1000 persons during two hours. There is a difficulty beyond all this-in a large assemblage there may be many persons whose systems are disordered, and the vapor of their breath very highly charged with offensive matter, and this floating in a heated moist atmosphere, becomes injurious to a healthy person to breathe, and still more injurious to a person who is speaking for an hour at a time in such an atmosphere.

Steamboats afford an opportunity for illustration. In the cabins of large steamboats filled with passengers at night, the atmosphere in the morning is very unpleasant to a person going into the cabin from the deck.

Persons who sleep in apartments in which no fire is used in winter, are more healthy than persons who sleep in heated rooms. My family for several years past have slept in rooms in which no fire is used, and we find a benefit in this, that we enjoy better health than when we used heated apartments.

I am of opinion that it will be found on examination that persons using apartments warmed by heated air, are less healthy than those using close stoves, and those using close stoves less healthy than those using open fire places. Open fire places are the best of ventilators to apartments.

I have made my couch on the high mountain top with green boughs and used the same for a covering, as well as for a pillow-and I have reposed in a snow house in the wilderness and in both slept more sweetly than I ever slept in a crowded cabin in a steamer, for both on the mountain's top and in the snow house, I had a purer atmosphere to breathe.

Sound is wonderfully affected by temperature, hence the calculation generally made as to the size of apartments in reference fo the labor of the speaking is erroneous-the size of the apartment has but little to do with the estimate. The temperature and peculiar shape of the apartment governs the sound. I have made experiments upon sound on the pinnale of high mountains, on broad rivers, in the Mammoth cave several miles under ground-in circular apartments surmounted by high hemispherical domes, and the result of these was most convincing. During dark nights on the Mississippi and Ohio

rivers it was formerly the custom for boatmen to determine which shore was nearest, and how far distant, by stamping on the deck, or giving a shrill whistle, and noticing the return of the echo from the nearest shore-a little practice will enable the observer to estimate distances with great accuracy.

The construction of apartments for public speaking is a very nice matter, and should receive more attention than is generally given to this subject.

It is as easy to ascertain the hygromatic state of the atmosphere of an apartment, as it is to determine the temperature of the air. Yours, &c. Nov. 27, 1846.

E. MERIAM.

RAIN. The fall of rain at Saltville, Va., in the month of November, 3 inches 63.100 of an inch, of which, two inches and seventeen hundredths fel in the night time. At Syracuse, 6 inches and 15.100 of rain fell in November.

EQUILIBRIUMS.-In November, at Syracuse, New York, 9th, 10th, 11th, 20th, 21st, and 22d, and atmosphere in a peculiar state 1st, 3d, 12th, 13th, 16th, 18th 23d, 25th, and 28th.

THE GREAT HURRICANE IN CUBA.-The Diario, of Havana, publishes a list of the houses destroyed or injured, in and about the citv, by the terrible hurricane of the 10th and 11th of October. Houses destroyed, 1275; more or less injured, 1038. Of the former, 36 were of stone, and 1239 of wood; of the latter, 225 were of stone, and 813 of wood. In the district of Guanabacoa, there were ten persons killed and twenty-eight wounded, more or less grievously. In Tepaste, where there were fifteen coffee-plantations, the most of the plant was destroyed, with a In Potreros full threefull third of the sugar cane. fourths of the tobacco plants were annihilated; also, the white and black beans and vegetables; the bananas are all lost. The potatoes and yams escaped without much injury, being under-ground productions. An immense quantity of domestic stock, cattle, poultry, etc., were destroyed. In Buenavista and San Miguel, the potatoes, Indian corn, bananas, and vegetables of all descriptions suffered immensely.-True Sun, Dee. 14.

Had an earthquake accompanied the storm, the stone houses would have suffered the most. It is highly probable that the hurricane was the offspring of an earthquake.

EQUILIBRIUMS.-In November, at Saltville, Va. 6th, 7th, and 8th; atmosphere in a peculiar state on the 1st, 3d, 4th, 11th, 12th, 18th, 19th, 22d, 24th, 27th, 28th and 29th.

TEMPERATURE.-The highest temperature in November, at Saltville, Va., 700 on the 2d, from 2 to 4, P. M., lowest on the 27th; 90 from 6 to 7, A. M.— Highest at Syracuse, New York, on the 3d, at 3, P. M., 690. Lowest at sunrise on the 27th, 200. At Brooklyn, New York; highest on the 3d from 2 to 4, P. M., 670. Lowest on the 27th, at 8, A. M., 240.

COLD IN THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE.-The whale ship Merrimac, of Newburyport, was off Cape Horn on the 4th of July of the present year. Snow storms prevailed, and ice islands were abundant and of great height. The cold was very severe, the thermometer ranging from 40 deg. to 48 deg below zero. Cape Horn is in South Latitude about 56 deg., and West Long. about 67 deg. This is very cold weather for that latituae.