184 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. 
Wasuincton, December 25, *48. 
Dear Barrp,— 
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. 
