Letter from SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD to GEORGE PERKINS MARSH, dated July 1, 1858.
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My Dear Mr. Marsh.
I wrote on receipt of your letter to Mr. Wyllys Lyman about the Persian Insect powder, but told him that it would not be of much account in the woods as its effects could not be sufficiently concentrated. Its great efficiency is against bed bugs and roaches. We also find it useful in keeping flies off the table at dinner, by setting it around in small plates.
I have picked out the books you wrote for with the exception of some 6 or 8 which after repeated examination I could not find. The others go probably today by express. I found Bosworth in our Library whither it had strayed by mistake
You may imagine how glad Mary and I are to hear of Mrs. Marsh's improved health and
hope
it may
continue till she is perfectly well. Mary has not been at all well this Spring, but
is again on the mend.
We are now arranging the collections, and shall have no difficulty in filling our cases. Congress gives us $4000.00 this year for the conservation of materials of U. S. exploring and surveying expeditions.
Guyots tables I will send with the other books
We go to Carlisle this summer, as I must do much work yet on Government Report. I have turned off one volume (VIII of Pacific RR. Rep) of 800 quarto pages, and have 600 pp. Printed of IX, on birds. About 400 pp. More will probably complete my matter in this report, and I have about 250 for the Mexican Boundary one
Affectionately YoursS. F. Baird
Geo P Marsh
Burlington --
References in this letter:
A Burlington lawyer, sometime law and business partner, and friend of Marsh, Wyllys Lyman (1797-1862) married Marsh's sister. Senator George Franklin Edmunds was his son-in-law.
Joseph Bosworth, A Dictionary of the Anglo-Saxon Language. London: Longman etal, 1838.
Swiss-American, Arnold Henry Guyot (1807-1884), taught physical geography and geology at Princeton University. Under Smithsonian Institution auspices, he set up a system of weather observatories that utimately grew into the U. S. Weather Bureau. His barometric tables, published as A Collection of Meteorological Tables, with other tables useful in practical meteorology, published by the Smithsonian in 1852, were very influential. Guyot's contribution to physical geography, Earth and Man (Boston: Gould and Lincoln, 1849) inspired Marsh, despite Marsh's disagreements with some of its premises.
In 1853, the War Department supported a series of expeditions to determine the best of four routes for a railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. The Smithsonian Institution appointed naturalists to accompany the parties and organized the supplies and equipment. The final report was published in 1860.
Baird prepared the ninth volume, Birds as part of the Pacific Railroad Expedition Report: Reports of Explorations and Surveys to Ascertain the Most Practical and Economical Route for a Railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. Washington, DC: A.D.P. Nicholson, 1858.