“H. wants me to go farther in the Cass Front; But I am determined to fall in the rear, as I have written to him.  For the last three years I have been going on the Dutch plan, which, had I always pursued, I should now have had $10,000 in gold in my trunk, instead of having ten thousand trunks full of ground.”

7th.  Dick says that there are about 60,000 species in the animal kingdom.  Of these, 600 species are mammalia, or sucklings, mostly four-footed; 4,000 birds, 3,000 fish, 700 reptiles, 44,000 insects, about 3,000 shell fish, and 80 to 100,000 animalcula, invisible to the naked eye.  Perhaps these species may reach to 300,000 altogether.  Yet here are no estimates for plants, ferns, mosses, madrepores, extinct fossil species, minerals and rocks.  What a field for the naturalist!  Yet Pope could exclaim—­

     “Say what the use, were finer optics given,
      T’ inspect a mite—­not comprehend the heaven.”

We are, in fact, equally and as much in want of microscopic and telescopic knowledge.

20th.  An Indian, a Chippewa, recently visited the office, whose name is Nageezhik.  This is one of the simplest compounds.  I spent some time, however, with the man and his companions to get its exact etymology. Geezhik is the sky, or visible firmament, seen through the clouds.  The word denotes two phenomena:  first, something visible to the eye that is fixed and does not move, which is implied by the root geezh, and the inflection ik, which seems applicable to all inanimate substances, to denote the fact of their substantivity.  The sky is thus described apparently as a created, or made thing. Na (the aa in Aaron) is a qualifying particle of very general use.  It appears to place substances to which it is affixed in a superlative sense, and always as exalting the object.  Thus its meaning may be fair, admirable, or excellent.  Applied to geezhik, it implies an excellent quality in only one sense, that is excellent or fair, for a spot on the blue profound, of which geezhik is the description.  For fairness or excellence cannot exist, or be described in their language, unless seen plainly by the eye.  It is the spot made by a small cloud that makes it excellent or fair.  The meaning is the fair or excellent (spot) on the sky.

March 1st.  Madwaybuggashe, a Chippewa Indian, of Grand Traverse Bay, Lake Michigan, related the following dream of Nebahquam, an Indian who recently died at that place:—­

Nebahquam dreamed that he saw a white man coming towards him, who said, You are called.  He replied, Where am I called?  The white man pointed to a straight path, leading south-east.  Follow that.  Nebahquam obeyed and followed it, till he came to a thick wooded country through which the path led.  He soon came to stumps of trees newly cut down, and afterwards heard a cock crowing.  He next passed through a new town, where he was inclined to stop, but was told