APPORTIONMENT TO CITIES, TOWNS AND VILLAGES, FOR 1863.—Continued. Additional sum reserved for any Roman Catholic Separate Schools which may be established in 1863.... 510 00 Total School Apportionment for 1863. $159,500 00 CHAPTER IX. CORRESPONDENCE OF MR. THOMAS NELSON AND DOCTOR RYERSON IN REGARD TO SCHOOL MAPS AND BOOKS. 1. LETTER FROM MR. THOMAS NELSON TO DOCTOR RYERSON. I beg to send herewith duplicate copies, as requested, of the School Books I left with you the other day. I send also several other Volumes of our Educational Series, and I shall esteem it a special favour if you will kindly bring them before the Council of Public Instruction as soon as possible. I am busy making arrangements for publishing in this Country, and shall he able, ere long, to show that we can help on the cause of Education in Upper Canada. We possess facilities for the production of educational works beyond that of any other publishing house, and are prepared to carry out any suggestions that you may favour us with, either in regard to new books or changes in those we are at present engaged with. The enclosed Circular has been sent to each member of Council, as I am anxious to make it generally known that we are prepared to make arrangements not only for publishing educational works, but works in general literature. As no good map of Palestine or the British Islands has yet been produced here,* I shall be glad to supply ours on favourable terms, and to make any changes that you may consider necessary. I may mention that we are preparing another map of the British Islands, in which nothing but the British Islands will be shown, so as to have them on a larger scale than our present map, which is mainly intended for junior classes, and to serve as a help in teaching the early history of Britain. It has been so arranged as to show the parts of the continent from which the Norsemen, the Danes, Saxons, Normans, etcetera, came to the shores of Britain. I may also mention that our separate maps of England, Scotland, and Ireland are ready, and I hope very soon to submit them to you. The other maps in the list are all in progress, and I shall take the liberty shortly of consulting you about them. TORONTO, 6th January, 1863. (For answer to the foregoing Letter see Letter Number 8). 2. LETTER FROM MR. NELSON TO DOCTOR RYERSON. THOMAS NELSON. I was very glad to learn from you yesterday, that there was no obstacle in the way of our School-room Maps being put on the list as well as others, and I have now the pleasure of submitting to you the Map of Palestine, about which I spoke to you. I may mention that we have nearly ready a companion map of the Lands of the Bible, and I will take an early opportunity of explaining to you the peculiar features and advantages, for educational purposes, which these Maps possess over others. At home they are superseding all School-room Maps in the best Institutions; and I feel confident that the issue of them by the Department of Public Instruction here, will not only be a saving in a pecuniary point of view, but will keep the Schools of Upper Canada abreast of those in the old country. In regard to a map of the British Islands, I take the liberty of saying that I think you will do well to wait till you see ours. We have already issued one, shewing the relation of the British Islands to the continent of Europe; but we have another in progress which will show them on a much larger scale, and which will possess features These Maps have since been prepared and issued under the direction of the Department at $3 each. coloured, mounted, and varnished. Mr. Nelson proposed to supply his at $4 each, as intimated in the following extract from a Letter of his dated New York, 8th of April, 1863-"I received a note from Mr. Campbell, asking me to let you know the price of our Wall Maps Please enter the Maps at four dollars each, mounted and varnished." to be found in no other map. I would be glad to adopt any suggestions from you in regard to it before it is completed, and in the event of copies of it, or any of our other maps being wanted from us, it occurred to me that probably the best way would be for us to supply the sheets only, as I understand you have made good arrangements for mounting maps here. As I mentioned to you yesterday, I was sorry to see an imitation of our maps of the hemispheres in progress. I trust that when issued, they will be without our peculiar system of colouring. Now that I have come to this Country, it will be unpleasant to me to see imitations of what is peculiarly my own, and the result of years of experiment and study. I am quite willing to place our services, as publishers, at the command of the Department of Public Instruction here, but I cannot consent to others carrying out improvements made by ourselves.* I was glad to see that the matter had been entered into without your cognizance, and I trust yet to see the maps referred to, issued in a style that will not be recognized as an imitation of ours. You will find that in our operations here I shall be only too glad to benefit by your long experience and knowledge of the wants of the Country, and shall most cheerfully follow any good suggestions that may be made to us. I beg respectfully to thank you for the courtesy I have already received from you. 3. LETTER FROM DOCTOR RYERSON TO MR. NELSON, (CARE OF THE HONOURABLE GEORGE BROWN.)† I beg to acknowledge the receipt of you Letter of yesterday, with the beautiful May of Palestine. In regard to your Maps not being on the Catalogue, they were only received for the first time last year, while the Catalogue was published in 1856, and the Supplementary Catalogue was printed in 1861. We have specimens of the Maps which you mention as published, and there will be no objection to inserting them in the next edition of the Catalogue. We import as few Maps as possible, on account of the duties, and because we do all we can to encourage the printing of them in this Country. When you spoke to me the other day about the imitation of the colouring of your Maps in certain Maps which are in the course of preparation under contract by this Department, I stated that I was not aware of it. On receiving your Letter referring to the subject, I made enquiry and found that I was mistaken in supposing that you referred to the colouring of the different countries; whereas it appears that you had special reference to the colouring of the seas and lakes. You speak of your "system" of colouring having been imitated. I may observe that the same system of colouring the seas, lakes, etcetera, blue, was adopted by us in preparing maps which were published in 1856, copies of which had been procured by me at the Paris Exposition in 1855. The same shade, only darker, was used in colouring the Maps published in Boston, and prepared by Guyot, nearly ten years since, and advertised in our Catalogue of Maps for Schools in 1856. The blue shading of the Seas and Lakes in Guyot's Maps is not so dark as that of your Maps, but is darker than that which has been thought best for the Maps in preparation for our Schools. The printing of all the Maps which have been prepared in this Department has been done by contract, after having received Tenders from parties able to do that sort of work. Should you establish a printing and publishing House here, the same offer to tender for the publication of School Maps which we may require will be made How different this to the whole policy of the Department on the subject. Any improvement it may make in Maps, Globes, or Apparatus, may be freely copied by any one, while Mr. Nelson, of course, as a Publisher in the trade, claims a monopoly of all of his revisions and improvements Mr. Nelson is a Brother-in-Law of the Honourable George Brown, and stayed with him while in Toronto. This letter was, therefore, addressed to him there. to your House, which has been, or may be, made to other Map publishing Houses in this City. I may add that so far from being indisposed to procure and provide Schools with your Maps, some of them were ordered as soon as the publication of them was known; and Mr. Hodgins was in treaty with Mr. James Campbell, (your Agent here,) for the remains of his stock of them before your arrival in Toronto, but deferred the actual purchase until the beginning of another year, when we would have more means at command for that purpose. TORONTO, 10th January, 1863. EGERTON RYERSON. 4. LETTER FROM MR. NELSON TO DOCTOR RYERSON. Your favour of the 10th has been sent to me here, to which Address I shall feel obliged by your sending any future Communication. I beg to thank you for the intimation that our Maps will in future be supplied from the Depository in the same way as others. I shall take an early opportunity of calling to arrange about the price at which they will be supplied.* If ordered in quantities we are prepared to furnish them at a very low rate.t I shall ere long take the liberty of submitting for your approval something of a very important character in regard to several new School room Maps we are at present preparing. In regard to the Maps of the Hemispheres to which you refer, allow me to say that I know all the other Maps that you name. They are quite familiar to me, and yet it is apparent to me, and will be so to any one, that the two Hemispheres about to be issued from the Depository are imitations of ours. I beg respectfully to say, that ours were sent out from Scotland specially, and submitted at the beginning of last year, and I do not think it right that two Maps in imitation of them should have since been prepared and issued from a Public Institution. The imitation will be less apparent if they be issued in exactly the same style as the other Maps of your Series, and I trust this will yet be the case. It is our intention to make arrangements for publishing our Maps here, and I feel it necessary, therefore, at the outset, to remonstrate against any private Publisher. and still more against any Public Institution imitating what we have already, or shall hereafter produce. But upon this matter and sundry other things, I propose to speak to you when I have next the pleasure of calling. I am glad to see from your Letter and the conversations that I have had with you, that it is your intention, at once, to give our Maps and Books an equal chance with others. I know that I possess facilities beyond those of any other House for the production of educational works; and I anticipate much pleasure in consulting with you as to what will be best suited to the Schools of Upper Canada. 9 TORONTO STREET, 13th January, 1863. THOMAS NELSON. 5. LETTER FROM DOCTOR RYERSON TO MR. NELSON, 9 TORONTO ST. In reply to your Letter of the 13th instant, I desire to say that,Your Letter states that your Maps were sent out from Scotland, and submitted to me at the beginning of last year. What you mean by "submitted" I cannot say; but I am assured that no copy of any of your Maps was "submitted" to this Office, except what was ordered and paid for by this Department. You state that you are familiar with the Maps to which I referred. If so, you must be aware that there is no ground for the assertion that the Hemispheres about being published by Messieurs Chewett and Company, are imitation of yours, so far * See Letter containing this "arrangement" in the note on page 75. + Nevertheless the Department pays Mr. Nelson and Mr. Campbell, his Agent, more for each Map than to any other publisher. |