Transcribe Hornaday, W. T. Letter to Ward, Henry A. (1883-06-10)

ybg {At top of page in the margin, upside down- P. S. There is a man here from Costa Rica with the worst lot of rubbish you ever saw, Lucas & True would not take </u any > of his skeletons. Beware]

</em Society of AmericanTaxidermists >

FOR THE ADVANCEMENT AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE ART. Office of Executive Committee U, S. NATIONAL MUSEUM </em Washington, D.C., > June 10th 1883. My dear Professor:

    Yours from the land of James (June),

came yesterday and I hope you have sold a </u large > collection. Of course you will see Pres't Welch & Prof Bersey. for the I.S.A.C. is in full blast now. I hope you will have given them a special complementary message from me. But for Prof. B. I might have been two or three years longer in finding out Ward's Nat Science Estab!

    Really. I am more than willing to write </u anything >

for the July </u Bulletin >, but I hope to die if I know of any subject ! I would be ashamed to offer you anything on my old hobby - taxidermy - and for months I have not even </u thought > of anything else. No, I am not particular </s to > about being paid, for the </u Bulletin > is not a </u Youth's Companion > with 305,000 subscribers. If I can scare up a subject and one or two articles I will however be willing to have you give me one of those two remaining elephant feet which wife has been importuning me to buy and mount for her ever since we sold ours in Boston. Neither of them are good enough to mount, but she insists on having it </u anyhow >, and I suppose I will have to mount it.

    Well, I will think </u hard > from now on, and all

I can scare up for the Bulletin you shall have in good time.