Publication InformationJuly 2 1855

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Dear Baird

Yes, I do want some extras of the Camel, & a package of so many as you can spare say a couple, yea, by'r Lady, some four dozen-may be sent by express. Diabolus hath travailed me sore in the matter of . Think of a Calmue, with his hand twisted into a lock of camel's hair, in shedding time & wrenching it off, with grim grimaces! Did I not write plucked, I prithee? Also

what is a dressing of the snows of winter'? Well, 'tis my fate. I since translated a poem a translation wherein I prided myself-and sung of ghosts or goblins or the like. The printed it . What had been a natural blunder for a naturalist, who would naturally be thinking of grizzly bears. I perceive Diabolus inclines both to Euphemism and Euphrmism.. I wrote - printer elevates it to , suggesting images of the cestus of the mother of the loves. So I said . Typo thinks this familiar, infra dig. per an ex diplomat and scorning nick names prints . But

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these be trifles. I had made a memorandum of questions to ask you 'tis mislaid, and I remember only one. Hugh Miller says the old she bird assumes the plumage of the male. Is that so? I never knew an old hen put on long tail feathers, though I heard them crow. I remember another. So it as is reported by Eaton, (I use a German translation) that the labourers on the Erie Canal found 42 feet deep in diluvialschichten living purpureus, and curiosus, and roasted & eat the same?

I don't know where I shall be, but if you blow a tin horn about once in half an hour all summer long, I shall probably come within hearing of it, & will go to you.

My instruments (I have two, one of which embraces, I believe, two new applications) are beautiful to look upon, one of them at least, & will sell if but as an ornament.

I discourse at Hartford on the Study of Nature July 17' & 18- You don't know how scientific I am getting.

I pray health to thy wife & mine, who is but poorly.

WriteTruly yoursG. P. Marsh

Prof. S. F. Baird

References in this letter:

Marsh published two works on the Camel: "The Camel," in Report of the Smithsonain Institution for 1854, 98-122. 33 Cong. 2 Sess., Sen. Misc. Doc. 24. Washington, 1855. The Camel: His Organization, Habits and Uses, considered with Reference to His Introduction into the United States. Boston: Gould and Lincoln, 1856.

Diabolus is the Devil.

Beginning life as an uneducated quarryman, Hugh Miller (1802-1864), became a respected geologist, poet, and journalist who wrote extensively on the rock formations of the northern British Isles.