Transcription:
3 By brave mighty Proteus-Muggins you have also done well, though you might have praised him a little more loudly for hearty
endurance under manifold hardships - defying the salt blasts of the sea from Alaska to the California Golden Gate, the frosts
and fires of the Rocky Mountains - growing patiently in mossy bogs craggy mountain tops - crouching low on glacier granite
pavements, holding on by narrow cleavage joints, or waving tall slender graceful in flowery garden spots sheltered from every
wind among columbines lilies, etc. A line or two of sound sturdy Mother Earth poetry such as you ventured to give ponderosa
in nowise weakens or blurs the necessarily dry stubbed scientific description, I'm sure Muggins deserves it. However I'm not
going fault finding. It's a grand volume - a Kingly Lambertiana job, on many a mountain top trees now seedlings will be giants
and will wave their shining tassels two hundred feet in the sky ere another pine book will be made - so you may well sing
your nunc dimittis, so in sooth may I since you have engraved my name on the head of it.