No. 172.1 
6 
Your committee, from these and other considerations, deem the 
project of disposing of the copyright not only derogatory to the cha- 
racter of the State, but entirely visionary ; and as such unworthy the 
consideration of enlightened legislators. 
The plan proposed in the bill submitted by your committee meets 
the approbation of all those gentlemen concerned in getting up the 
work with whom we have been enabled to correspond, and we are 
assured, by gentlemen who are capable of judging, that ProfF. Mather 
would yield his hearty cooperation in a measure fraught with such 
beneficial results as the publication of the Natural History of this 
State would be, in a form and at a price that all the varied interests 
of our population could possess themselves of the work. 
Your committee will here embrace the opportunity of laying before 
this house the opinions of Professor L. C. Beck upon this subject, in 
a letter to the chairman of your committee. 
" Rutgers College, ) 
" New-Brunswick, N. J. Feb'y 20, 1846. $ 
*' Hon. Charles Drake, 
" Dear Sir — I this morning received your letter of the 16th 
inst. enclosing a copy of the resolution of the Assembly of New- York, 
in regard to the publication of a cheap edition of the ' Natural His- 
tory' of the State. 
I beg leave to reply that, in so far as my part of this work is con- 
cerned, I think it might be advantageously abridged and brought within 
the compass of four or five hundred octavo pages. The first part of 
my report (Economical Mineralogy) was published as a specimen of 
the whole work, nearly a year before the second or descriptive part. 
If the whole publication had been delayed I should have materially 
altered the plan. 
" I objected strongly to the quarto form, at least for my report, and 
even had a sheet printed in 8vo. but I was overruled by the authori- 
ties at Albany, and was of course obliged to yield. So fully am I 
convinced that an abridged edition of ihis work will eventually be called 
for, that I have, for a year past, employed some of my leisure hours 
in the revision of my part of it ; and it has been my intention, either 
at this or the next session of the Legislature, to apply for the privilege 
