Publication InformationDec 16

Page 1

Yours of the 14' November, which has just arrived, is a humbug, in regard, that the second & third pages are blank. I'm glad you stopped writing those foolish letters, and spent three months in running about and gathering vermin. I hope all your gigantic plans will succeed, & seriously I think the project of a National Museum a very good one. I take it for granted, you'll be at the head of the Nat. Hist. Dep't, and then you shall spend your time catching and describing, leaving 'prentice naturalists the work of disembowelling, skinning, and stuffing, and pickling. As to the Smithsonian, I have never had but one opinion, and though I have no wish to disturb the compromise, if it could be fairly carried out, yet, I believe the plan now in operation a bad one. Think what $30000 per annum would have done in collections of all sorts. The exchange system I like very well, but the work is that of

drudges. I was to have been off tomorrow, but Abdul Medjid has some questions of war or peace or something of that sort pending with Russia, and is too busy to give me an audience tomorrow morning, so I must wait I don't know how long. Write me at Rome, where I shall stay a while. I'm going first to Malta. Do you want a piece of St. Paul's cave? And then to Sicily. How would you like a fragment of Etna?

Mary's letter has met with acceptance. What a blessed girl it is! My wife shall respond. I wish she would mend her orthography. She writes 'how can I help it' The English here say 'ow can I 'elp it, which I believe is right. If I were to say I was at the end of my paper, I should fib as you did, when you sent two blank pages cunningly folded inside, but I am at the end of my letter, and so goodbye.

Yours trulyGeo. P. Marsh

S. F. Baird

References in this letter:

Sultan Abdul Medjid ascended to the throne of Turkey in 1839. With the aid of England and France he reestablished Turkish control over Egypt and substantially transformed the Ottoman Empire from a theocracy into a modern state.