. . .According to your wish [this refers to a suggestion about a fellow-student in a previous letter] I shall not bring any friend with me. I long to enjoy the pleasure of family life. I shall, however, be accompanied by one person, for whom I should like to make suitable arrangements. He is the artist who makes all my drawings. If there is no room for him in the house he can be lodged elsewhere; but I wish you could give me the use of a well-lighted room, where I could work and he could draw at my side through the day. Do not be frightened; he is not at my charge; but it would be a great advantage to me if I could have him in the house. As I do not want to lose time in the mechanical part of my work, I would beg papa to engage for me some handy boy, fifteen years old or so, whom I could employ in cleaning skeletons and the like. Finally, you will receive several boxes for me; leave them unopened till I come, without even paying the freight upon them,--the most unsatisfactory of all expenses;--and I do not wish you to have an unpleasant association with my collections. My affairs are all in order with Cotta, and I have even concluded the arrangement more advantageously than I had dared to hope,--a thousand louis, six hundred payable on the publication of the first number, and four hundred in installments, as the publication goeson. If I had not been in haste to close the matter in order to secure myself against all doubt, I might have done even better. But I hope I have reconciled you thereby to Natural History. What remains to be done will be the work of less than half a year, during which I wish also to get together the materials for my second work, on the fossils. Of that I have already spoken with my publisher, and he will take it on more favorable conditions than I could have dictated. Do your best to find me subscribers, that we may soon make our typographical arrangements. . . His father's answer, full of fun as it is, shows, nevertheless, that the prospect of domesticating not only the naturalist and his collections, but artist and assistant also, was rather startling. FROM HIS FATHER. CONCISE, November 16, 1830.