CORRESPONDENCE 193 



make a team that would be hard to beat by any of the 

 European museums." 



Writing at Milltown, July 23, 1882, he says: "I 

 received your letter and think I should not have answered 

 it so soon only to ask about Nelson who, you say, has 

 gone away to Colorado, sick. When you write tell me 

 what the matter is with him. I wish he had come this 

 way for I think our summer climate very hard to beat. 

 He wanted me to send him a few skins of our eastern 

 birds from my duplicates. I sent him many and wrote 

 him but did not receive an answer." Again on Decem- 

 ber 29, of the same year, writing from Minneapolis, he 

 says : "I have not been able to hear from Mr. Nelson. 

 How is he ? Have you heard anything from Turner? 

 Let me hear." In 1883, on March 6, he writes : "Have 

 you anything new from Mr. Nelson, if so let me know. 

 I hope to hear he is better." 



" I received a letter a few days ago," Mr. Boardman 

 writes on September 8, 1885, "from a Mr. Wright 

 which I enclose. I have nearly forgotten about the ring 

 as it was fifteen years ago. It would be just like me to 

 get the ring (I learned that trick from you) for the 

 Smithsonian. If you have any book such as he describes, 

 please have it sent him or send some other book. The 

 ring, I think, is in the large room at the Smithsonian. 

 It was dug from an Indian mound." And so the happy 

 record goes on until the long and intimate friendship, 

 uninterrupted for a period of nearly a quarter of a cen- 

 tury, comes to an end. 



