ON THE TRANSLATION OF MINERAL CONCHOLOC4Y. 
O 
Nothing would he 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 
at a sum above that necessary to cover the expense of its publication. I 
protest also, that I had not the least intention of injuring the Editor of the 
original edition : if I have dispatched some copies to England it has been 
with the view of letting my scientific friends see the number of additions and 
corrections which I have incorporated in my translation. All this proves that 
in the present instance, as always, I have only acted from a regard to the 
interests of science. An illustrious English geologist can, if required, re- 
late what I said to him on this subject before I occupied myself with 
the translation. 
This leads me to make one other remark to you. I understand, that by 
way of reprisal, as though I had committed hostilities, there is in prepa- 
ration a subscription to bring out a reprint of my Fossil Fishes, with an 
English translation of the text, at 10s. a livraison instead of 30s. Permit 
me to tell you my notions upon this subject. If the fact be true, and I am 
to regard this act in the light of a reprisal, I must deem it most perfidious 
and disreputable ; but if the thing be only undertaken as a matter of uti- 
lity, I declare with the same frankness, that I shall be gratified, hoping 
thus, to see my work pass into the hands of some hundreds of persons who 
would not perhaps be able to obtain it at the original subscription price. 
As I have now pretty well ascertained the amount of my subscribers, I have 
only had a few copies struck off beyond that number, and my edition will 
consequently be disposed of before a reprint can be completed ; and as I 
have effaced the drawings from the stones, at no future time shall I be de- 
