Publication InformationWashington Apl 18 48

Page 1

Dear Baird

I give you joy of your salamanders, first, because they are nasty creatures, that nobody will steal, and secondly, because they are so incombustible (if you doubt, read Benvenuto Cellini), that when some envious rival naturalist sets your museum on fire, they will escape unscathed. In them therefore you have an abiding treasure, and I trust your salamandrian and protean heads (which, we learn from Horace, omne cum Proteus c

were some years since driven out to pasture on the Alleghenies & Adirondacks) will multiply, until they shall be as the sands of the seashore.

I will see the man with a hard name, who chiefly affecteth malacology, and propound in your behalf a swap, between old Europe and young America. There is also a Thuringian, who looks like an American, but is more as the poet sings:--

Thüringens Berge, zum

Exampel, geben Gewächs, sieht aus wie Wein,

Ist's aber nicht.
Yclept Wislizenus, who hath wandered in New Mexico, and written a book, and is very full of prickly pears, burs, and cacti überhaupt. Him also will I move to communicate

with you. I wish you would come hither and see these men, whom you would find not good naturalists merely, but accomplished and agreeable persons.

Mrs Marsh ventured yesterday to walk a few rods to a neighbor's. The exercise was too much for her, & she is not so well this morning.

We all desire affectionate remembrances to all yours, & hope to see you either here or at Carlisle before we return to Vermont.

Yours trulyGeo P Marsh

Since the above was written, I have seen Herr Lischke, who will write you in High Dutch touching Umtausch c. Also, Capt. , of the Austrian army, hath given me a slip as the address of a great exchanger of exchanges who dwells somewhere and would fain

communicate

References in this letter:

In his Autobiography(1558-1571), Bellini recounts an incident from his childhood when his father showed him a salamander playing in the middle of a lighted fire.

Latin: Changeable, like Proteus, the sea god of Greek mythology.

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.

A Prussian naturalist who visited Marsh in Washington.