Transcribe Hornaday, William T. Letter to Ward, Henry A. (1876-02-17)

[page 3] have is $100. or over, which is not a perfect specimen. Now we reasoned that this must certainly worth buying at $24.00 and so we bought it. Mr Wildeboer's price was $6, on which he stuck a long time as his lowest, but he finally said to me privately "My lowest price is L6, and I will sell it to you for that, but I L5. This is a secret between us." mHe has sent one to the Cente? which is for sale, but he protested from the start that the price he had fixed on that was L10. I to;d him if he offered it for less we would not buy this, as we could not buy specimens from him and then com- pete with him in the U.S. He said he was aware of that, and that was why he put this specimen at L6. I felt sue you would buy this if you were here, so we took it. It goes to you in the box we send from here.

        Flying-fish came in by cart-loads,

and scarcely any other fish. Mr W. says we are in the very worst season for getting fish, as only that one kind is caught during this month. Three barracuda came in but we did not take them. We have a fine lot of crabs - 7 species, and a fine lot of sea-eggs -?-, also star-fish 3 species ???. The first are the same as you need, from Panama, or at least very similar, but ours are all