Transcribe Ward, Henry A. Letter to Fairbanks, Franklin (1892-11-01)

the individual prices are taken from my large Catalogue of </s Act > Comparative Osteology which you have at the Museum. They add up to the sum of </u $345. > I see no way - no desirable way,- of reducing this amount. True, in the 1st Order a smaller, cheaper substitute could be found for the one given, - the Sangus Monkey. And in the 5th Order a common Bat ($9.) might be substituted for the great Ceylon Fruit Bat, with its 2 1/2 foot spread of arms. The sum of $20. might be saved here. But the series would be lessened in choiceness, and ^in^ such serviceability and value as depends upon striking, bold display. So I hope that you will feel disposed to take the full, perfect collection. I feel quite sure that in teaching value and in the beauty of its </u display > it will be the finest in your State. You may - in the arrangement of your Museum, - put all these skeletons together, as a series of </u Comparative Osteology >. As you may work them in in the Classification with your Mounted (stuffed) animals. In this latter case you would have each natural group represented both by its Morphology - its external forms, - and by its skeletal frame-work. The relations of the two, with their points of mutual dependence, are beautifully brought out when ^they are^ seen </u together >.