1 84 SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD 



Phila. Catalogues of public libraries I have none. Inquire also at 

 the Society Library in New York. You will have no trouble with 

 Danish, but the way of studying you propose is naught. Don't 

 begin with analogies. If you do, bye and bye, you will find you can't 

 tell what is what, and when you think you are speaking German you 

 will be makking Dansk. You can get dictionaries etc. through 

 Garrigue. Study the language per se, and the analogies will come 

 fast enough to embarrass you, without being sought. . . 



From George P. Marsh to Spencer F. Baird. 



WASHINGTON, December 25, '48. 

 DEAR BAIRD, 



I send you by this mail, in four envelopes, 250 pages or so of a 

 book Garrigue wants translated. It is the explanatory text of the 

 Brockhaus Bilder-Atlas, and will make 1000 pages or more. He 

 proposed to me to undertake it, which I declined and, after proper 

 reservations touching my own superior qualifications, recommended 

 you as the next best person to do the work. He will pay well, I 

 think, $1.00 per page of printed matter or thereabouts. Will you 

 translate it, correcting, continuing and annotating to some small 

 extent? If yea, write G. forthwith, and fix your terms and time. 



Charles Rudolph Garrigue of New York, publisher, 

 had secured the plates of Brockhaus' "Bilder Atlas zum 

 Conversations Lexicon," published in Leipzig. This was 

 an encyclopedia in which it was attempted to reduce the 

 amount of text by supplying an immense number of well 

 executed illustrations in place of descriptive matter. 



This of course was long before the day of cheap photo- 

 engraving, and the two oblong quarto volumes of twelve 

 thousand steel engravings represented a large expendi- 

 ture of money. The Leipzig publisher was, therefore, 

 glad to recoup himself by selling the plates to be used in 

 illustrating a translation which would not compete with 

 the original German edition. 



