Letter from SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD to GEORGE PERKINS MARSH, dated November 8, 1857.
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My Dear Mr. Marsh
Mary and I were very glad to hear of your good fortune as times go in getting the railroad commissionship. Not that we dont firmly believe that there is no place quite equal to your deserts or ability to fill. May not this be considered as the turn of the tide even if it be only a very little flow.
Gilliss as far as I know is perfectly well. He was at the Smithsonian friday last. I saw them all at home a week or two ago. James has just gone to Florida on Coast Survey duty.
Toussenel is no ornithologist, but a mystical rhapsodist about birds, and the like.
The only work of his I have ever seen or can recal is . We have it, but I have [never] read it. The work by Quatrefages is one on the coast Fauna of Sicily in
connection
with Milne Edwards I do not now recall the title.
I am not aware that Deser has ever published anything on physical geography of America. If so, it is probably either in Bulletin Soc. Geol. de France or in: Bulletin de Genève.
We are getting along much as usual here. Mary however I am thankful to say, much better. She weighs 140 lbs. And is almost her own old self again, but free from head and back aches almost entirely, walks to any desirable extent, and acts like folks. I am hammering at government reports: have printed my vol. on Mammals, 800 quarto pages forming vol. VIII P. RR reports, and am deep in the birds of same series. I send you the introductory sheets of mammals containing list of N. Am. Species. They are hard at work at cases in Smithsonian Museum Hall; are altering inside of library to accomodate more books, and when collections are arranged we shall make a grand show.
With much love to Mrs. M. from Polly and me. I am
Yours trulyS F Baird
Hon Geo P Marsh
[The following appears along left margin of the page]
P.S. I enclose
title of Quatrefages as just furnished by [N W. Simpson].
References in this letter:
James Melville Gilliss (1811-1865) was both a naval officer and astronomer. He was responsible for proposing and supervising the building of Naval Observatory in Washington, DC (1842-1844). In 1846 he was assigned to the U.S. Coast Survey and spent several years in Chile conducting astronomical observations. The Gilliss family, based in Washington, became close friends of the Marshes and the Bairds.
Alphonse Toussenel, L'esprit des betes. Le mondes des oiseux, ornitholgie passionnell. Paris: Librarie phalanstérienne, 1853.
Armand de Quatrefages de Bréau was the author of the second volume of Recherches anatomique et zoologiques faite pendant un voyage sur les co)circumflex)tes de la Sicile.... 3 vols. Paris: V. Masson, 1845-1850. And The Rambles of a Naturalist on the Coasts of France, Spain and Sicily. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longman and Roberts, 1857.
Henri Milne-Edwards (1800-1885) was a professor of entomology and comparative physiology at the Faculté des Sciences in Paris.
A friend and asisistant of Louis Agassiz, the geologist Pierre Jean Edouard Desor (1811-1882) followed Agassiz to the United States in 1846. Before returning to Europe, he studied the Atlantic shelf and Lake Superior. He is the author of a two volume work on glacial theory.