Publication InformationCairo May 3 1851

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My dear boy

I arrived here a week since after an absence of three months in upper Egypt & Nubia, & found your welcome letter of Feb 9'--. I regret I had not heard from you earlier, as I could have procured you several of the skulls you wish, had I known they were particulary desirable. As it was, I did the best I could, but my dragoman mistook my orders & got but little spirit at Cairo. In Upper Egypt I could get only arrack, & every thing I put into that liquor spoiled. I had an asp, two cerastes, two large, (crocodile-egg-eating) and many small lizards of various species, many species of fish, two pelicans heads, with the sacs and the parasitic animals that inhabit them, also the neck & curious respiratory apparatus, some other birds, & other curious things, but they are gone, and I have now only three large and a few small

lizards of different species, a few beetles, shell fish, and other fish of the Nile, the head & neck of a small ostrich, the heads of two cerastes & an asp, scorpions quantum suff. bats, frogs & toads, in small variety. They will be packed today, & sent off in the course of next week. On monday, we start for the wilderness, but I cannot carry much spirit on camels, though I hope to secure you the heads of some gazelles & wild goats. We saw many crocodiles, but though I offered large prices, I could get neither eggs nor young. It is a dangerous diversion to look for the nest of this bird, & the people don't like to undertake

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it. The crocodile is a very ferocious animal, we heard many well authenticated accounts of the destruction of human life by them. The quadrupeds of the valley of the Nile are few. The gazelle ( I have seen but three wild) the fox, the hyena, and the jerboa and ichneumon nearly make out the list, but the birds are incredibly numerous. The waders greatly predominate, & it is pleasant to see the harmony in which these poor creatures live with each other & even with the crocodile. I saw one of these beasts completely surrounded by a flock of white, blue, & grey herons, spoonbills & geese, twenty of them at least within reach of his tail. The

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crocodile bird (Herodotus' trochilus) is very common, but I saw it near the crocodile but once, & then it wasn't picking his teeth. As for the Ibis, if in fact it was as Herodotus says, it is no longer to be found here, but most persons take a very common bird of snowy plumage to be the Ibis. But insomuch as the lotus & papyrus are gone or nearly so, why not the Ibis? I am ashamed to have transversed so much of Egypt and Nubia, & understood so little. How I envy you your knowledge of the many tongues in which mother Nature speaketh to her children. In fact I hold ignorance of geology, physical-geography, and natural

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history to be a crime, and if I am hung for it, I shall still say the sentence was just. I say to you in strict confidence that I expect to come back next winter & go as high as Khartum in 16, & if possible even further. Therefore send me not only spirits, but . Casks are not good in this dry and cooperless land. glass with wide mouths and good corks & bladders or some other mode of making them tight, I should prefer, but I think good tins before hand would answer well. The trouble or expense of collection I don't

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mind, but the materials of preservation can't be got here. Let me have every thing , not next winter, but now. You'll get this in June. Don't wait till cold weather, but send your traps to Yasigi & Goddard in a month at most to be sent by first ship to Smyrna, otherwise they will come too late. I will look out sharp for salamanders & if I find a new one, you shall name it Salamandribus Bairdii or the like. Don't make the name good Latin. The naturalists won't be able to construe it, if you do. Don't let your husband work

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himself to death, Mary. Take away his tools and let him journey. Wasn't that a good word I made in my last letter, 'snakery'? Put it into all the scientific glossaries and things. I like your plan of exchange, but am sorry your time should be taken up with clerk-work. The personnel of the Smithsonian ought to be increased. It is by no means large enough. What is Jewett doing? I have not heard from him for a long time. I have many things to say to you, my son, but on Monday I go in pursuit of the children of Israel as Pharaoh

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did, & have no time. Go on as you have begun, but don't undertake too much, nor waste these golden hours of your precious youth on matters of mere routine. Let the dead bury their dead but do thou fulfill thy vocation. Mary knoweth that she is dear unto me even as thou, and I thank her for her kind expressions of interest in her ancient friend, and now I bid ye both heartily farewell.

Your true well-willer,Geo P Marsh

P.S. I send a box of shells & snails, with a crocodile's egg. The palm fruit in the same box is for Dr. Wislizenus. The snails are from the Desert.

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We were sorely sick--Mrs M. & I--and the Doctor thought we should not recover. I didn't believe them as to myself, but my poor wife has had several most narrow escapes, the narrowest of all since our return. She is now about as well as usual, which is not saying much. Why don't you send me the last Rept. of the Smith. Inst ? Am I not worthy? What is gone of Jewett? I hear nothing from him. How do you get on with the Iconographic? Garrigue is

a sorry varlet. I wrote him for books twice a year & half since, & he takes no notice of me. Does he think I shan't pay him? Why do you brag of your travels to me, ? What is Otsego to Nilus, Mount Washington to Sinai & Horeb or Cambridge to Petra? Faugh, how I contemn the untravelled! Next spring I'll shame all adventurers. I'll go to the center of Bokhara, yea to the borders of Cathay. Therefore hasten the barometers. I will measure mountains. My love doth await you & Mary & Lucy, also my wife's. Let Mary write. She oweth a letter to thine & her ancient friend.

G. P. Marsh

References in this letter:

A Boston shipping company.

Frederick Adolph Wislizenus (1810-1889), a German born physician, emigrated to the United States in 1835. He published a scientific account of his trip to Chihuahua, Mexico in Memoirs of a Tour to Northern Mexico, Connected with Colonel Doniphan's Expedition in 1846 and 1847. (Washington: Tippin and Streeper, 1848). In 1850 he married Lucy Crane, Caroline Crane Marsh's sister; they settled in St. Louis where he practiced medicine.

Beginning in 1846, annual reports were submitted to Congress by the Smithsonian Institution. Originally limited to the business of the Board of Regents, they developed into a series of reports on research and lectures in different branches of knowledge. They were published as goverment documents and distributed to learned societies.

Charles Coffin Jewett (1816-1868), a distinguished librarian from Brown University, was appointed senior assistant secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in 1848. He and Joseph Henry were continually in conflict over the importance of the library within the Institution's mandate and he was fired by the Board in 1855. He later became superintendent of the Boston Public Library.

Charles Rudolph Garrigue, a New York publisher, obtained the plates to F. A. Brockhaus's Bilder Atlas zum Conversations Lexicon (Leipzig) with the intention of republishing them with an English text. Marsh suggested that Baird translate and revise the work. It was a massive undertaking on which Baird spent four years. Published in 1852 as The Iconographic Encyclopedia of Science, Literature, and Art, it established Baird's reputation.