New Gazetteer of New York.—­Mr. Carter writes (Feb. 5th) inauspiciously of the course of affairs at Washington, as not favoring the spirit of exploration.  He proposes, in the event of my not receiving the contemplated appointment, the plan of a Gazetteer of New York, on an enlarged and scientific basis.  “I have often expressed to you my opinion of the Spafford Gazetteer of this State.  It is wholly unworthy of public patronage, and would not stand in the way of a good work of the kind; and such a one, I have the vanity to believe, our joint efforts could produce.  It would be a permanent work, with slight alterations, as the State might undergo changes.  My plan would be for you to travel over the State, and make a complete mineralogical, and geological, and statistical survey of it, which would probably take you a year or more.  In the mean time, I would devote all my leisure to the collection and arrangement of such other materials as we should need in the compilation of the work.”

Feb. 18th.  Professor Dewy writes, vindicating my views of the Huttonian doctrines, respecting the formation of secondary rocks, which he had doubted, on the first perusal of my memoir of the fossil tree of Illinois.

Feb. 20th.  Caleb Atwater, Esq., of Circleville, Ohio, the author of the antiquarian papers in the first volume of Archaeologiae Americana, writes on the occasion of my geological memoir.  He completely confounds the infiltrated specimen of an entire tree, in the external strata, and of a recent age, which is prominently described in my paper, with ordinary casts and impressions of organic remains in the elder secondary rock column.

Feb. 24th.  Mr. McNabb communicates further facts and discoveries of the mineral wealth, resources, and prospects of Western New York and Pennsylvania.

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Narrative Journal.—­Professor Silliman (March 5th) communicates an extract of a letter to him from Daniel Wadsworth, Esq., of Hartford, to whom he had loaned my Narrative.

“I have been very much entertained with the tour to the western lakes.  I think Mr. Schoolcraft writes in a most agreeable manner; there is such an entire absence of affectation in all he says, as well as his manner of saying it, that no one can help being exceedingly pleased, even if the book had not in any other respect a great deal of merit.  The whole seems such real and such absolute matter of fact, that I feel as if I had performed the journey with the traveller.

“All I regret about it is that it was not consistent with his plans to tell us more of what might be considered the domestic part of the expedition, the character and conduct of those who were of the party, their health, difficulties, opinions, and treatment of each other, &c. &c.  As his book was a sort of official work, I suppose he thought this would not do, and I wish he now would give his friends (and let us be amongst them) a manuscript of the particulars that are not for the public.  Mrs. W. has also been as much pleased as myself.”