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Copy to:- Mr. W. Cameron Forbes. Bostone Milton Hill, 29th April, 1872. My dear Mr. Muir: The box of specimens of
wood has come safely through your friend. They are what I wanted - thank you very much. The bulbs were injured before I got
them, but the seeds are now beginning to come up. I have also one sequoia tree up - it is about an inch high. Before it is
30 ft. through the trunk, there will be time for many changes in and on our little planet. I had read an account of the earthquake
in the Yosemite. I should like to have felt it, but for safety would rather have been out of it. The accounts of the earthquakes
and eruptions of Vesuvius are very interesting - that sort of commotion seems to be in various parts of the earth just now.
I saw Prof. Gray a short time since. He spoke as if he was going to the Yosemite. It will be interesting to you to go about
there with him. I also hope you will see Prof. Agassiz and party. I do not know how soon he will be there. Mr. Forbes has
just started for Fayal, to bring my daughter home. We are having the driest of springs here, and no mountain streams near
to draw from as they have in California. There is much in Mr. Emerson's writings to admire, yet in him I always feel the
want of the genial sympathy with human everyday life - if he was musical perhaps he would have a touch of Robbie Burns, which
united with his purity of thought would be fine -- but each has his own individuality, and each must work that out for himself
as best he may. Very truly yours, S. S. Forbes I went to the observatory in Cambridge the other day and saw flames on
the edge of the sun - they looked about so high but were about 10,000 miles high. On folder Muir wrote, Mrs. Forbes of Emerson's
party in Yo.