"The Connecticut legislature (composed, like most of our state legislatures, very much of practical working men, farmers and others from the country) wished to know the geological resources of the state. An appropriation was made. Percival was appointed. His was not a mind for a superficial investigation of things. Unfortunately, the legislature expected only a superficial view—at least, a very brief, practical report of the available state resources. This might have been all that was necessary, but practical men, and men devoted to the high interests of science, take a very different view of things. Percival formed his plan for this survey. It was a remarkable one. Those who have seen a Virginia fence can have a tolerably clear idea of his plan; for in the manner that such a fence traverses a field, he proposed to traverse the state—with this difference, however, that whereas a Virginia fence does not return and take the other angle, Percival's plan did. In fact, beginning at a corner of the state, he was to trace over its entire expanse a double Virginia fence, of which the following array of x's may convey some faint idea:

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"By this plan, he subsequently told me, there was scarcely a spot in the state, which he had not either passed over, or been within a reasonable distance of.

"Percival, at the start, bought him a horse to help him trace this Virginia fence. But he soon found this impracticable, inasmuch as drawing direct lines over a state is not exactly a horseback road. So he betook himself wholly to pedestrianism. He had, throughout, the strangest adventures. The country far-

coiled at it as though stung by an adder.

“A long difficulty ensued. Percival had accumulated enormous materials. The collected specimens nearly filled a room. A full report, voluminous as it might have been, would have proved an invaluable and remarkable work of a great geologist. But finally, a condensed, and to Percival doubtless, unsatisfactory report, was made.

“This experience must have injured Percival, and driven him to the extreme of seclusion again—and of poverty.

“We do not know whether it was before or after this incident, that his friends, desirous of aiding him, are said to have made that proposal, the result of which was so half laughable and half serious. He was to lecture to a class of young ladies in a school. His excessive and morbid sensitiveness immediately started a difficulty. How could he face those young ladies? The expedient was finally adopted that he should *not* face them.

“Now young girls have a very strong and no doubt highly censurable proclivity to mirthfulness, (!) and, unaccustomed to being lectured to from behind, they could not sufficiently repress their spirits. The result may easily be guessed: the lectures were abruptly terminated.

“True or not, this related incident shows how difficult it is to do aught for one in whom the word is so interested, and for whom it would fain do so much. With the simplicity, and earnestness, and confidingness of a child to those whom he momentarily trusted, Percival had the proud, and lofty, and inaccessible *hauteur* of an intellectual prince, to the world at large.”