358 LETTER FROM PROFESSOR AGASSIZ 



Paques prochain; et je m'estimerais heureux de le voir tra- 

 duit et reproduit sous quelle forme que ce soit. 



Esperant que vous voudrez bien inserer le contenu de ma 

 lettre au complet en le traduisant litteralement, j'ai Vhonneur 

 de vous prevenir que j'en expedie quelques copies a plusieurs 

 de mes amis. 



Veuillez agreer, 



Monsieur, 

 L'assurance de ma consideration distinguee, 



L. Agassiz. 



TRANSLATION. 



Neuchatel, May 15, 1839. 



SIR, 



I have just read in the 29th number of your Journal an in- 

 vidious crimination of the part which I have taken in the cheap edition of 

 So. Min. Conchology, now in course of publication by M. Nicolet. No- 

 thing would be more richly merited than the strictures which are there 

 passed upon me, were it not that the assertions and insinuations which the 

 article contains are altogether malicious and without foundation. As you 

 have brought forward this accusation in your journal, I expect from your 

 sense of honour that you will give publicity to my justification in your 

 forthcoming number. 



Notwithstanding the great importance of Mr. Sowerby's work on the 

 Fossils of England, this publication has met with but few purchasers on 

 the continent ; and the knowledge which I possess of the most important 

 European Scientific Institutions, has assured me that a French or German 

 edition of the work, published at a lower price, would be rendering a real 

 service to Science, without in any way proving injurious to the original 

 edition, for which the principal demand is in England. Would it then 

 not be unfair to represent such a publication as a systematic piracy ; as 

 though translations of scientific works were not being made every day with 

 the consent of authors, and with still greater reason after their death ; and 

 as if in doing that, which you, as the conductor of a scientific journal, 

 ought to know I am justified in, I am likely to injure the family of Mr. 

 Sowerby in depriving them of the benefit of a publication of which they 

 have had the disposal for more than fifteen years, and which has been com- 

 pleted ten years, after the addition of two posthumous volumes ? But in 

 addition to this, when I agreed with a lithographer, M. Nicolet, to bring 

 out a cheap Sowerby, I gratuitously furnished him with a translation of 

 the text, enriched with numerous additions and corrections. It is then 

 altogether untrue to say that the edition in question is but a sorry imitation 

 of the plates of the English work accompanied by a mere translation of 

 the text. I should never have lent my name to such a machination. It 

 appears to me therefore, very strange conduct in the Editor of a scientific 

 journal to give, without examination, publicity to such calumnies ; and 

 I affirm that the insinuation of my having entered upon this undertaking 

 with a view to pecuniary emolument, to be altogether unfounded. On the 

 contrary, only 300 copies have been struck off, and I agreed with the Edi- 

 tor as the price of my participation in it, that the work should not be sold 



