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San Francisco, Cal. Jan. 28th. 03. Prof, John Muir, Martinez, Cal. Dear Sir:- Your kind Rate of recent date is rec'd.
and I have been endeavoring to go out and see you. but have been so very busy that it seems almost impossible to get away.
I will, therefore, endeavor to make plain to you our desires in connection with the article Glaciers11, and trust you can
decide the matter without my conferring with you personally. Mr. Frederick Converse Beach, the Editor-in-Chief of the Scientific
American is also Editor-in-Chief of the new American encyclopedia, which we are arranging to issue. The title of the book
will be the ENCYCLOPEDIA AMERICANA . It is to be to America what the Encyclopedia Britannica was to England. Each and every
article is to be written from an American standpoint, and every subject of any especial importance is to be written by what
we consider the greatest living specialist in America on that particular subject. I have to-day arranged with Dr. David Starr
Jordan for an article of 15,000 words on Icohyology and will see Prof. Jacques Loeb of the University of California relative
to an article on Invertebrate Embryology? Now Mr. Beach is very anxious to have you prepare the article on Glaciers, and request
that it embrace from two thousand to three thousand words. He is also very anxious to receive your photograph and asks that
I make inquiry from you where we can obtain a good biography of yourself. In consideration of the preparation or the article
on Glaciers I am authorized to offer you one complete set of the ENCYCLOPEDIA AMERICANA bound in Three quarter Leather, the
net price of which is , 96.00, and for which Mr. Gillis, State Librarian at Sacramento has just given an order agreeing to
pay this amount; in fact, we have taken a number of orders from prominant people in this city and vicinity, although no volumes
are yet issued. If .you can see your way clear to accept this proposition, I trust you will sign and return to me one of the
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