Letter from C[harles] S[prague] Sargent to John Muir, 1899 Apr 3.

ARNOLD ARBORETUM,HARVARD UNIVERSITY.Jamaica Plain, Mass,...........April 3,............... 1890.My dear Muir:I have yours of the 28th with photograph of Picea engelmarmi in the Bitterroot Reservation. The picture is a lovely one and, ifit will answer for the purpose, I will have a transparency made from it. Will let you know in a few days what luck I have in this. I still want the Redwood and Sugar Pine, hut these are difficult fellows to manage, for the bigger the tree the harder It is to photograph it well.I return Mr. Sawyer\u27s letter and enclose the notice about The Silva from The Evening,Post and Nation. Like most people who write about the book, this writer devotes more attention to the question of nomenclature than to the true inwardness of the work.I am horribly busy with new trees which keep cropping up always in the most inaccessible part of the country, but today I have really learnt two facts; one is that the Birch of the Yukon Basin which we hear so much about and which appears in all the photographs of the country is not out Canoe Birch, as has generally been supposed, but the species which we saw at the head of the Lynn Canal; and second that the Alder of the Yukon Basin, or one of them at least, is the same species which grows on the coast and which used to be confounded with the Al-nus viridis. This we found, as you remember, a tree at Skaguay and I am going to call it Alnus Sitchensis.These facts I discovered from specimens collected by some Britisher at Dawson thatsummer and sent02558 ARNOLD ARBORETUM.2to me by the Geological Survey at Ottawa.Canby is feeling pretty lively and has been to Cape May to find that Myrica which we saw on that miserable day in Delaware and has found it, making a new northern station for this southern tree.The only thing which makes me look forward with any pleasure at all to the idea of going to the Pacific coast this summer is the chance it would give me of seeing you. I hardly think I shall go, although there is a question of a Juniper or two and of that Mendocino Cypress which is bothering me a good deal.I went over to see Mrs, Gray the other day, and During the winter she has been shut up six weeks with the grippe. I never saw her looking better or in better spirits.With kind regards to your family,Faithfully yours,[illegible]John Muir, Esq.Martinez, Cal