1846-47-] CAPTAIN WILKES EXPEDITION. 287 



the explorers and savants connected with the govern- 

 ment. 



In order to remedy such a condition, all the reports 

 of the Wilkes Exploring Expedition were placed under 

 the direction of one man, Mr. Drayton, who super- 

 intended the whole publication. But, going from one 

 extreme to another, the Senate, which made the law, in- 

 serted in it a provision by which the number of copies of 

 each volume was limited to two hundred, and distributed 

 exclusively to senators ; while of Captain Fremont's re- 

 port, issued in 1845, ten thousand extra copies were 

 printed for the use of the members of Congress. The 

 immense difference between two hundred and ten thou- 

 sand copies is evident. The result was that Wilkes's 

 reports, being placed exclusively in the hands of sena- 

 tors, no one of whom was a scientific man, or had suf- 

 ficient knowledge of natural history to appreciate their 

 value but distributed them simply on account of the 

 beautiful plates, became extremely rare from the very 

 first. Half of the number of copies was soon entirely 

 lost, and some of the reports were destroyed in a fire at 

 the printing establishment, so that now several of the 

 great quarto volumes and folio atlases of the expedition 

 have become so scarce that it is almost impossible to 

 get copies at any price. 



The report of Fremont, which was defective only in 

 good execution, was furnished with poor engravings, poor 

 plates of fossils, poor paper, and printed from indifferent 

 type. When Agassiz received at Washington, from 

 the hands of Colonel Abert, chief of Topographic Engi- 

 neers, Fremont's report and those of Nicolet, Abert's 



