AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED BY BRITISH CAVALRY COMMANDER HENRY PAGET, 1ST MARQUESS OF ANGELSEY.

February 6th, 1847.. 1847.. Very good. - Letter penned in black ink & filling almost 3 sides of a sheet of light gray paper folded once to form 4 sides approximately 7-1/4 inches high by 4-5/8 inches wide. The letter has been mounted on a lightly larger sheet of cream-colored stiff paper. Signed "Anglesey" There are a few small ink smudges to the 2nd & 3rd sides. Very good. <p>The letter is addressed to Scottish geologist Sir Roderick Murchison and concerns a publication which Murchison is proposing and how it would be funded. "Some Estimate of the probable cost of money and of time is called for from General Colby, and when it is received you shall again hear from me." The reference is probably to General Thomas Frederic Colby, a leading geographer who had been director of the Ordnance Survey.<p>Henry Paget, 1st Marquess of Anglesey [1768-1854] was a British army officer and politician. After serving as Member of Parliament for Carnarvon and then for Milborne Port, he took part in the Flanders Campaign. During the Peninsula War he commanded the cavalry for Sir John Moore's army in Spain and at the Battle of Sahagun virtually destroyed a regiment of French cavalry. He led the charge of the heavy cavalry against Comte d'Erlon's column at the Battle of Waterloo, losing part of one of his legs to a cannonball at the end of the battle. In later life he served as Master-General of Ordnance from 1846 to 1852.<p>The Scottish geologist Sir Roderick [sometimes, as here, spelled "Rhoderick"] Impey Murchison, 1st Baronet (1792-1871) was the first to describe and investigate the Silurian system. During the last decade of his life he chiefly investigated the Highlands of Scotland. Murchison was one of the founders and a president of the Royal Geographical Society and served on the Royal Commission on the British Museum. In 1855, he was appointed director-general of the British Geological Survey and director of the Royal School of Mines and the Museum of Practical Geology in Jermyn Street, London.