But the truth is that the inexhaustible areas of land, which are naturally rich, in the far West, and the products of which can be cheaply conveyed to the coast by the railway system, determine all industry and all enterprise in that direction. Thus even in the heart of Massachusetts, and in the immediate vicinity of some of the oldest and most populous cities of the Union, it is not worth while to lay out much capital on the reclamation of land comparatively poor.

Under the hospitable care of Mr. Cyrus Field, we enjoyed a most agreeable visit to Newport, a watering-place on the coast of Rhode Island which is the favorite resort of the most cultivated society in the United States. The handsome villas and houses of Newport are surrounded by well-kept lawns and shrubberies, and the principal drives are pleasantly shaded, in the New England fashion, by flourishing trees. On the "Ocean Drive," which extends for some miles along the rocky shore, one can enjoy the freshest breezes of the Atlantic, which here washes the low cliffs, and penetrates into the little creeks, with waves of the purest water and of the most lovely green. We visited the venerable old church, and saw the pulpit from which the great Bishop Berkeley had discoursed to the colonists of Rhode Island, and a pleasant road along the shore to the northward led us to the rocks where he is said to have composed his "Minute Philosopher." It gave me great pleasure to renew my acquaintance with Mr. Bancroft, who so long and so worthily represented his Government in London. But it was with deep regret that I missed seeing Professor Agassiz, the distinguished son of a distinguished father, whose zealous pursuit of science and whose high attainments in many departments of knowledge promise to give fresh renown to an already illustrious name.

Our journey from Newport to New York was performed by sea, in one of those gigantic steamers which are more like immense floating hotels than boats of any kind, and which are peculiar to America. To see one of these immense vessels approach a pier or quay, on which one is standing, is quite a new sensation. It is the pier which seems to move, and not the vessel, which from the vastness of its proportions can not be accepted, as it were, by the eye, as a moving body. It is impossible by any effort to get rid of this illusion. The momentum of a floating body of such vast weight is, of course, enormous, and the slightest collision with any structure on the shore would be correspondingly destructive either to the vessel or to the pier. Consequently they have to come up to these places with the utmost caution, and nothing but great experience and great skill enables them to be brought alongside with the requisite nicety. By the kind per

mission of the captain we were allowed to be in the wheel-house in coming up to the pier at Newport. Although the water was perfectly calm, and there was no wind which could affect even that huge structure, there were six men at the wheel. The approach was made in perfect silence, with an intentness of attention on the part of the officers in command which showed the great care requisite in the operation. In many respects these great steamers are as comfortable as they can be-excellent sleeping-cabins, excellent cooking, great speed, and the utmost attention on the part of the service on board. But in my opinion they have one great fault, and that is that very much too small a space of uncovered deck is left for the enjoyment of the scenery and of the fresh air. Almost the whole area is occupied by immense saloons, with all the closeness and stuffiness which are inseparable from cabins, however large, especially when they are occupied by a great number of passengers of all kinds and classes, and when they are also lighted with gas. Only a very small space at either end of the vessel is perfectly uncovered and open to the air. The top of the whole structure, the roof of the "Noah's Ark "—the hurricane-deck—is not available for passengers, and the gigantic “walkingbeam" of the engine, which swings its arms on the top of every American steamer, would make it a dangerous walk for careless people.

The intense heat which brooded over New York during the very short stay I was able to make there rendered it a work of no small labor to see even the Cypriote collection of General Cesnola and the Museum of Natural History. The first of these ought to have been secured for the British Museum. Its great interest lies in the close links of connection which it supplies between the art of Assyria, of Phoenicia, of Egypt, and of Greece. At New York it is, for the present at least, entirely isolated and separated from all other collections which are related to any one of its many-sided aspects. But our American friends did a good stroke of business in securing it for a sum small in comparison with its great value in the history of ancient art. It must be added that the wealthy and enterprising citizens who secured it for the New World show a proper appreciation of the prize, and that the illustrations and descriptions of the many curious and beautiful objects it contains, which have been executed in America under General Cesnola's directions, are worthy of their theme.

Even a visit of two days to a city like New York leaves some impressions on the mind which can not be very wide of the truth. It is impossible not to be struck by the great wealth and luxury displayed both in its public and in its private buildings. It has been a commonplace to speak

of the growth of luxury in the Old World, and of the increasing separation between the rich and poor. It is often said that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. I have always doubted the fact. The increase of wealth in recent years in England and in Europe generally has been mainly, I believe, an increase in the number of moderate incomes and an increase in the wages of labor. But, if the common, saying is at all true anywhere, I should say that the appearances of it are most conspicuous in such a city as New York. Costly and ostentatious houses are far more common than in London. Shops for the sale of luxuries are on an enormous scale. I doubt if there exists anywhere in London, or in any capital of the Old World, such an establishment as that of Tiffany, in New York, for the sale of jewelry and other articles of great cost. It is an establishment, too, it must be added, not more remarkable for its enormous extent than for the admirable taste of its designs. Other "stores" on a similar scale, for the sale of women's attire, indicate the scale on which luxurious expenditure prevails among the rich er classes of America. And it must be so. The growing wealth of America is founded on the secure possession of every element which can yield boundless returns, not only to industry, but, above all, to capital shrewdly used. In the Old World those who gain great profits are accustomed to look to the future, and not to think only of the present. They seek investments which will be a permanent record of their success, and be a lasting influence in the society to which they belong. They buy an estate, they build cottages, they drain and reclaim land. In the New World this incentive to saving does not exist. Fortunes are expended as rapidly as they are made. A few individuals of great public spirit found or endow public institutions, or become munificent supporters of scientific research. But such persons are, and always must be, a very small minority. The tendency of things is to lavish expenditure and to luxurious living. I am not now arguing as to which of the two systems is the best. One great moralist of the last century has said in a celebrated passage that "whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present advances us in the dignity of thinking beings." But many political philosophers do not accept this doctrine, and are jealous of the wealth or of the distinctions which may be gained by individuals in one generation surviving in another. Whether this jealousy be good or bad, it is certain that laws or customs which are inspired by it tend to the quicker dissipation rather than to the more equal distribution of wealth. New York has all the appearance of being one of the most luxurious cities

in the world, while the discontent of the working classes is often propitiated, if I may believe the general consensus of my American friends, by tolerating heavy taxation which these classes impose, but to which they do not contribute, and by an expenditure of the funds so raised in a manner which is generally extravagant and very often corrupt.

There is another subject on which I derived a strong impression in America, and that is the really irrational character of the agricultural panic which has prevailed of late in many parts of the United Kingdom. If, indeed, we are to assume that the succession of bad seasons which has recently occurred in England marks a permanent change for the worse in our climate, there might be room for the most serious alarm. But, so far as the mere fall in the price of certain agricultural products is concerned, that fall is one which has affected a great part of the world, and is quite as marked in America as in Europe. It has been the result mainly of the universal depression in almost all other branches of industry; and, after the repeated experience we have had of the history of such depressions, it seems difficult to account for the exaggerated tone of alarm which has prevailed when its natural and inevitable effects have been felt in the price of certain articles, which, after all, are only a very few among those on which successful farming must depend in Europe. The unbounded wheat-producing powers of the great Western Plains of the American Continent are no new discovery of the year 1879. They have long been known, and the immense importations they have afforded to our markets have been going on for many years, during which, nevertheless, the prices have not been so low as to be considered ruinous to the British farmer. It is possible, however, that the growth of this particular cereal may become permanently unprofitable on many soils which have hitherto been devoted to its growth. The exchange of this crop for other kinds of grain is a process which has been gradually going on for many years. Some thirty years ago, wheat was often grown in certain districts of the west of Scotland where it has been almost entirely discontinued. But the same land has been quite as profitably employed in the growth of other crops; and, until a long and acute depression of manufacturing and commercial industry had supervened for a period unusually long, the business of agriculture has continued to be as attractive and as remunerative as it has ever been. Even as regards the few articles of produce which have been subjected to a sudden and to a heavy fall in price, it seems to be forgotten that such reductions in value have an inevitable tendency to correct themselves. Let us take the case of cheese. For many years

the importations from America have been very large. The price, nevertheless, continued to afford a good return to dairy-farming at home. In 1878 there was a very sudden and a very great reduction. When I sailed for America, in the end of May, it was at about the lowest point. A few days after I landed at New York I found that the farmers of New England were quite as much alarmed as the farmers of Cheshire or of Ayrshire. There was a meeting of a Dairymen's Association at Utica, at which it was agreed that, at the prices then ruling in the cheese market, this particular form of dairy produce did not pay common interest on the capital invested in the land and in the stock. The conclusion was enforced by a careful and elaborate calculation of the money product of each cow, as compared with the cost of her keep and the cost of dairy labor. The result was, that the cost left a surplus on each cow of only about thirty shillings, from which had to be deducted whatever might be the calculated proportion due for taxes and insurance, and outlay for repairs on buildings and machinery. On the whole, the conclusion was drawn "that, in the case of average cheese dairies, the product of the cows during the year 1878 was scarcely sufficient to pay for their own support." The association consequently recommended its members to "go in" rather for the supply of butter and of fresh milk, and to give up a manufacture which had ceased to pay. On sending this report home to some of my friends in Scotland, I found it made no impression whatever. There is nothing so impregnable to attack as the human mind under the influence of a prevailing fear. But, within two months of my return to England, there was a rise in the price of cheese, even more sudden and violent than the previous fall. In one week, in consequence of telegrams from New York, intimating a great limitation of production, both from the voluntary abandonment of the manufacture and from the scorching effects of a hot summer on the pastures, the price of American cheese rose ninety per cent. But, although the depression of prices was very severely felt in America, it was spoken of and treated there, as all similar depressions of trade ought to be treated—a matter to be dealt with by those concerned—and remedied, in so far as it admitted of remedy, by changes in the direction of agricultural industry. I must add that the universal testimony I heard, in regard to farming in America, so far at least as regards all the Eastern or Atlantic States, was to the effect that it was a business in which nobody expected to make, or ever did "make money," in the sense of realizing even a moderate fortune. represented as an industry in which men were contented with a pleasant and healthy occupa

It was

tion, with a competent and comfortable living. I apprehend that this is very much the position of affairs in the Old World, except that, under the system of letting land with the security of leases, and with definite stipulations, high farming at home does often yield returns largely profitable. I saw nothing in America which gave me the idea that anything like "high farming" was even known there. Prodigality of surface does not induce or tempt one to bestow such pains on restricted areas of land. Strong local attachment to a particular farm was spoken of as almost unknown. The owners were represented as generally willing and anxious to sell if a good profit could be made by doing so. And a shrewd farmer, who crossed with me in the Scythia, and who had emigrated from Scotland early in life, spoke of this circumstance as fully accounting for the indisposition of farmers in America to publish or complain of the smallness of their gains. Such complaints could only tend to damage their own property. In England, he observed, similar complaints had exactly the opposite effect, inasmuch as they aimed at and tended to the reduction of the price or rent for which land was hired. In this difference lay, according to him, the real secret of the difference between the farmer of the Old World and the farmer of the New, in times when agricultural depression was equally oppressing both. If there was much shrewdness, there was also some cynicism in this observation of my Scotch friend, for undoubtedly the exceptionally bad harvests which have lately affected the wheat-producing districts of England and of Scotland have had a very severe effect, greatly aggravating the results of a mere fall in price. But the agricultural interest has had many times of depression quite as serious before. Rents will necessarily adjust themselves to any permanent change either in climate or in price. For my own part, I believe in neither.

Of one great pleasure I derived from my short visit to America I must say a word. Those who have never cared for any department of natural science can form no idea of the intense delight and refreshment of seeing for the first time a fauna or a flora which is entirely new. This can only be felt in perfection by passing direct from Europe to the tropics. The temperate regions of all the great continents of the globe present only varieties of one and the same general aspect. But, as regards my own favorite pursuit, that of ornithology, the passage from Europe to any part of the American Continent is the passage to a new world indeed. One may be quite sure that, with very few exceptions, every bird one sees is a bird one has never seen alive before. One gets out of sparrowdom," or, at least, one would have got out of it completely in America, if our

"

old and forward little friend, the Passer domesticus, had not been, of malice prepense, introduced into the States, and had not bred and flourished there with a success and an impudence in proportion to the care which has been expended on his welfare. In all the Eastern cities of the Union breeding-boxes are provided for the sparrow in the trees which line the streets, and the park at Boston is almost disfigured by the hideous miniatures of houses and cottages which are stuck up everywhere for the accommodation of this favored representative of the old country. If the sparrow is to be educated in architecture, I wish our American friends would take more care as to the models set before him. Cocoanut-shells, or any other similar vegetable production, or even clay bottles, would be better than the painted sections of street houses which are too generally provided. But, at least, when we get outside the cities we get outside of sparrowdom. The whole avifauna of America is fresh to an English eye. There is indeed that strange likeness in the midst of difference which is one of the mysteries of creation when it is seen in lands separated by several thousand miles of ocean. The swallows are all obvious swallows, but with one exception* they are all different from the swallows of Europe. The starlings are obvious starlings, but with scarlet epaulets. The very crows have a flight in which one detects a difference. The great order of the Flycatchers is represented by forms much more conspicuous and larger than at home. The handsome king-bird (Tyrannus carolinensis) was one of the first that attracted my eye from the railway-carriage. The large belted kingfisher (Ceryle Alcyon) was passing with a jay-like flight over the creeks and marshes of the Hudson. On looking out of my window in the morning at the glories of Niagara, I was hardly less interested by seeing the lovely American goldfinch (Chrysomitris tristis) sitting on the low wall which guards the bushy precipice under the hotel. A golden finch indeed! the whole body of richer yellow than any canary, with black wings and cap. The family of the Warblers was first indicated to my eye by the beautiful Dendroica æstiva among the overhanging vegetation of the same place. It reminded me much of our own willow-wren in movement and in manners, although it is much less shybeing common among the trees in the streets of Montreal. The azure of the bluebird, with the strange song and piebald appearance of the bobolink (Dolichonyx oryzivorus), enlivened our drive

* The exception is curious-it is the common bankswallow, or sand-martin (Cotyle riparia), which is one of the shortest winged of the whole tribe, and the least

capable of establishing itself by migration on each side

of the ocean.

from Niagara to the heights of Queenstown. The sharp wings and swift, powerful flight of a bird of dark steel-blue color had often attracted my curiosity before I knew that I had before me the purple martin (Progne purpurea), the largest and handsomest of all the Hirundinæ. It was with no little surprise that I saw in the seething waters of the pool below the great Falls, and in the whirlpool, some miles farther down the river, one of the Colymbidæ, which was, I believe, the American representative of our own blackthroated diver (Colymbus arcticus). In the calmer waters of the Lake of Beauport I saw one of the birds common to the two sides of the Atlantic, but now comparatively rare in Britain, that splendid bird the great northern diver (Colymbus glacialis). In the forests of the Restigouche, dense, stifling, and almost impervious, my ear caught endless notes of warblers and of tits, and of finches, which were wholly new to it, and had generally a ventriloquistic character that seemed to render sound useless as a guide to sight. I obtained specimens of the lovely American redstart (Setophaga ruticilla), of the indigo-bird (Cyanospiza cyanea), and of that curious family Vireo-Sylvia, which constitutes a link between the Flycatchers and the Warblers. In the evenings, high over head, I watched with delight the buoyant and beautiful evolutions of long-winged goat-suckers or night-hawks (Chordeiles Popetue), feeding on high-flying lepidoptera, and chasing them with

Scythe-like sweep of wings that dare

The headlong plunge through eddying gulfs."

In the forest on the banks of Cascapediac River our carriage dashed into a covey of the socalled Canadian partridges, a species representing the widespread and beautiful genus Tetrao, or grouse (Tetrao canadensis). One of our party attempting to catch some of the young chicks was attacked by the mother with heroic dash, which effected so good a diversion that her object was fully attained, and at the imminent risk of her own capture she effected the escape of every one of her brood. The exquisite pattern of rich browns and russets which marked her plumage was beautifully displayed when her tailfeathers were expanded in the fury of her attack. Near the same spot I saw a fine example of the close analogies of coloring which prevail in certain groups of birds both in the Old and in the New World. We all know that several of the gray linnets of Britain are adorned in the breeding-season by the assumption of crimson feathers on the breast and forehead. But in the kindred or allied species of America the same coloring pervades the whole plumage, and the purple finches of Canada and the Northern States are

among the handsomest of American birds (Carpodicus purpureus). On the Cascapediac also I saw, what I did not see on the Restigouche, numbers of the night-heron (Nyctor dea Gardeni), a bird reminding one of the graceful bird at home, but, on the whole, a less conspicuous and a less ornamental species. Of one celebrated American bird-the white-headed eagle (Haliaëtus leucocephalus)-I must vindicate the character. He has been accused on high authority of living by piracy, not fishing for himself, but basely using his superior weight and strength to compel the osprey or professional fishing-eagle (Pandion carolinensis) to give up its prey. On this ground no less a man than Benjamin Franklin expressed his regret that this eagle should have been chosen as the national emblem of the United States. The great American ornithologists, Audubon and Wilson, both repeat the same story, and neither of them appears to have ever seen a white-headed eagle capturing his finny prey from the water, except, indeed, on one occasion, when an eagle was seen in most unaquiline fashion wading in some shallow pool and picking out redfins with his bill. But I had the good fortune on the Restigouche to see a fine white-headed eagle catch a salmon for himself, by what seemed a bold and almost a dangerous manœuvre. About a thousand yards below our encampment the river disappeared round a sudden bend, with a very sharp current. The eagle appeared coming up stream round this bend, and flying slowly about thirty feet above the level of the water. Over the sharpest part of the current he hovered for a moment, and then dashed into the stream. With a good glass I saw him buried deeply in the water, holding his neck well above it. It was evident he had some difficulty in getting out of it again. A few heavy and laborious flaps of his immense and powerful wings lifted him at last, but with empty talons. Very tired, apparently, he flew to an adjacent bank of gravel and sat there for some minutes to rest. But his countenance and attitude were those of restlessness, eagerness, and disappointment. He then rose and returned to exactly the same point in the air, and thence made a second plunge. It was beautiful to see his bearing in the stream, with the water breaking against his great brown chest, and his arched neck keeping his snowy head clear of its turbulence. This time the difficulty in emerging was much greater, for his talons were fast in a fine salmon. With a strong effort, however, his pinions again lifted him and his prey, which it seemed as much as he could do to carry to the same bank of gravel, where the struggles of the fish were soon put an end to by the eagle's terrific clutches and his powerful beak. This was all honorable work, and, although the osprey was

frequently to be seen on the same river, I never observed it to be followed or molested by the eagle. On another day one of these magnificent birds lighted on a blasted pine, which overhung the river at the height of about five hundred feet, and from that elevation he watched one of our party playing a salmon, an operation which he seemed to regard with great curiosity, and probably with some longing to take his part in the sport. The pure white head and the equally pure tail of this fire eagle, in contrast with the dark chocolate-brown of the rest of the plumage, make it one of the handsomest of its tribe.

The provinces of North America have one great advantage which is not possessed by any part of Europe. They are in unbroken land connection with the tropics. There is no transverse range of mountain, there is no region of desert sands, no strait even of narrow sea, to impede the most delicate forms of the southern fauna from traveling northward with the summer sun. It is wonderful how many tender creatures make out their passage to our own shores with the returning spring; but in Britain there are none which come from a farther distance than that limited belt of the African Continent which lies between the Atlas and the Mediterranean. Very many of them pass their winters no farther off than the sunny banks of the Riviera. Last winter I found the olives at Cannes full of blackcaps and willow wrens, while the whitethroat and the Sardinian warbler sometimes serenaded us from the roses which climbed around our windows. But no bird from tropical Africa can cross the desert and the Atlas. These great transverse barriers in the path of migration are barriers not to be overcome. In America, on the other hand, there is no such impediment in the way of an uninterrupted passage from the lowest southern to the highest northern latitudes. The consequence is, that even Canada, whose soil is fast bound in ice for some five months of the year, is the resort in summer of a joyous company from the far south, who find upon their way a perfect continuity in the supply of food, and in their final goal, even amid a very different vegetation, a summer heat which is fitted for the rearing of their young. It is due to this that the woods of North America are illuminated with the brilliant coloring of not a few species which almost seem to contrast unnaturally with the foliage of birch and pine. Foremost among these visitants from the far south I knew that Canada was visited every year by a single species of that wonderful family of birds which is one of the glories of nature-the humming-birds. It was one of my great expectations in crossing the Atlantic that I might see the rubythroat (Trochilus colubris). Everywhere I asked about it—wheth