Publication InformationRome, 29 Dc. half way between Xmas & NYear's with good wishes to you all, 1874

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Dear Baird

Yours of Dec 13 with promise of your new book on fishes, which I shall be very glad of, came this morning. I retaliate by sending an order on the publishers for my book, & am appending 2 Errata under another cover.

In the App. & text, I say many profane things of meteorologers for whom I have not much respect. In the matter of rain, at least, whence it comes & whither it goes, & how much there is of it, Meteorology has no right to call itself a Science but a mass of ill-

assorted conjectures. I think they should begin at the beginning, & establish some rules for observation with a glimmer of common sense in 'em.

I don't expect you to read the book, and though I grant 100,000 years indulgence to all who peruse it candidly I also grant a dispensation to such as don't choose to read it all.

It would surprise you to see Mrs Marsh read & write 6 or 8 hours a day, but alas! about what! Social & etiquettal notes! It is too bad, even worse than the hour's torture I undergo every day with that fiendish invention

of the "Continuous Current." Well, I have had a month of it to no purpose so far--

With these two exceptions we are comfortable. If I get back my money from [...] Habicht and Co, the ---- it shall go hard but I will see Dr Dohrn & his fish some day

Love to allYours trulyG P Marsh

I am most heartily glad that my dear niece Carrie has got back among you. I have got a capital No of the Bolletini for Lucy. Discovery of house of Me[...] & all that. I shall send a box about Jany 15

References in this letter:

U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, Report of the Commissioner for 1872 and 1873: inquiry into the decrease of the food-fishes; the propagation of food-fishes in the waters of the United States. Washington, DC, 1874. (Misc. docs. 42nd Congress, 3rd session, Senate, no. 74).

Man and Nature; or Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action, 1864.

The zoologist Felix Anton Dohrn (1840-1909) founded a zoological station in Naples in 1874. It was the first laboratory established for marine studies and devoted solely to research.

Carrie Marsh Crane, Caroline Marsh's niece, daughter of her brother Thomas, accompanied the Marshs for a number of years during his tenure as minister to Italy. She died in a shipwreck in 1874.

Archaeological Bulletin of the Muncipality of Rome Rome. Commissione Archeologica. Bulletino: 1872-1920.