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ARNOLD ARBORETUM, HARVARD UNIVERSITY. Jamaica Plain, Mass.,......August....29,.....1899. My dear Muir: I have always
said you were Illegible and your letter of the 18th con-firms my opinion. The idea of pleading the necessity of staying in
the house to string words together when you can be in the woods looking at Crataegus You may deceive yourself with such platitudes
but they make no impression on me, so please be prepared to meet me in St. Louis when you hear that I can be there. It will
be a little later than I supposed and very likely not until the end of September as I am detained at home by a most troublesome
matter of business which I cannot shirk. I will give you, however, due notice if I hear that you are putting aside your childish
notions. Then, as I wrote you the other day, I am depending on you for this Juniper matter. There are so many questions to
be settled in so many different parts of the country that that final volume of The Silva seems more remote to me now than
the twelfth did when I first put pen to paper. I am delighted at what you tell me about our friend Patton's Spruce for you
carry the range of this noble tree much further to the westward than any one has before. I shall have a note about this, of
course, in the supplement to The Silva. Can you give any more accurate information as to the ford where you saw it growing
in Prince William's Sound, and did you see it anywhere else west of Sitka, which I had to give as the extreme western habitat
of this species as known 02613