p. 12

1022

-1212-
1862.

history of the state, excepting, perhaps, zoological specimens. The cabinet of minerals is not only rich by the number of specimens but by their beauty and size. ***

In Geology you have not only a large number of fossil species peculiar to the different formations of American fossil shells of the Silurian; fossil shells and fishes of the Devonian; fossil plants of the coal, &c., &c., but also a full series of rocks and fossils, illustrating in perfect order and with perfect clearness the geology of the state of Wisconsin. If to this I add your very fine collection of American and exotic shells, your cabinet of American Antiquities and your collection of plants, mostly American, all correctly determined and perfectly preserved, it presents a very high value to the eyes of a naturalist as I am. *** The botanical collection contains, without counting the mosses and other cryptogamous plants, more than eight thousand species of plants, most of them with doublet specimens. ***

Of your [writing] library, I can say as much as of the cabinet. If it does not contain the books that a specialist would want to go through an extensive series of researches in a particular branch of natural history, it has, what is far more valuable for the American student, the collection of scientific journals, containing reports on American Natural History. Besides their own value such collections are very rare and I have myself found in your library scientific documents that I could not obtain elsewhere. ***** I will only mention as a proof of the value of your books, what I have recently seen at an auction of scientific books at Columbus [Columbus] (Ohio) where every one of the American reports sold at from five to ten dollars. Your library of more than one thousand volumes