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ARNOLD ARBORETUM, HARVARD UNIVERSITY. Jamaica plain, Mass,.........March 13,...............1899. My dear Muir: The
mail has just brought me yours of the 8th and I hasten to congratulate you on the termination of the grippy condition of your
family. It has been a horrid winter, I believe, for every one and I rejoice that it is nearly over. Massachusetts, however,
is not California in March, and we are still enjoying east winds, slush, melting snow, mud and all the other horrors of our
spring. Your Oak was duly received and seemed to us at the time to be Quercus Garryana, but who can tell much about an Oak-tree
from such specimens, certainly I cannot. I am very pleased and contented at what you write about The Silva. Few people, I
fancy, can realize the difficulty of such a work, and there is no one in the United States whose praise for it I so much value
as yours. I am glad if the reading of it seems smooth for the gathering of the facts and putting them in shape was anything
but easy. You certainly are the only fellow who knows the trees and lover them enough to properly review such a book, and
I await with impatience your essay in The Atlantic. I am going to Washington for two or three days the middle of April to
a meeting of the Academy, to make a little change for Mrs. Sargent after our long hard winter, and then about the 1st of May
Canby 02552