p. 36

-36-
1828.

I had not suspected that the mistletoe grew anywhere except near the river before that day.

March 16. Took a walk into the woods, with Darius, south of this place, but found nothing to interest the botanist,-the ornithologist would have been interested in some degree, but very little.

March 17. Monday, St. Patrick's Day; Irish mean all drunk before night:: An effigy appeared on a pole this morning with a string of potatoes about his neck but he soon disappeared.

March 18. I went to school, where I have not been since the last day of last month.

March 19. Buds of the cotton tree (Populus angulata) containing the masculine flowers are beginning to open.

March 20. Peach trees are in full bloom.

March 21. Worked on the canal, the earth which is excavated is of two kinds, first, a bluish clay with fine sand and gravel, and 2nd, yellowish clay with fine sand, the same variety in color is observed in the sandstone which forms the Knobs, and the sand annually deposited by the river. The blue is the inferior strata laying immediately upon the rock. It is of different thickness but extends the whole length of the canal. The yellow contains minute shining particles (of quarts?), and lays immediately upon the blue variety and is thicker, extending to the surface of the ground, and indeed it is almost the only kind excavated at present. It never contains the remains of old trees, which are found to be plentiful in the blue variety.

Had all the earth been deposited here by the river as has been supposed, why are not these logs found in the yellow variety as well as the blue? Since it must have been deposited by the river and since the blue was deposited ? Bones of deer and Indian implements have been found in the blue, but not in the yellow variety.