DEPARTMENT OF GEOLOGY AND GEOGRAPHY 
THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN 
MADISON 
September 18, 1929 
Sr. M. L. Fernald 
Department of Botany 
Harvard University 
Cambridge, Mass. 
Dear Dr. Fernald: 
In my Haste in leaving the boat at Quebec I forgot to tell 
you good-bye, aad one of the purposes of this letter is to 
apologize for n}y apparent rudeness. 
In my conversation with you, you told me of planting seeds 
of plants and having almost total failure in the germination, 
and we suggested that this probably was due to factors lack¬ 
ing in the soil in which the seeds were planted. This lack, 
of course, represents one component of the environment. I 
am extremely interested in anything that bears upon the 
environment of plants and animals which has to do with their 
maintaining existence in any place. I have given much thought 
to this problem in connection with distribution of fossil 
organisms. 
You, no doubt, have published the results of your experiments 
with seeds, and I would like to know where the article or 
articles have been published, and if possible, to receive 
copies of them from you. In case you have not published the 
results, I would appreciate a letter describing the results. 
I have made similar trials-1 hesitate to call SWawa. expert* 
merus with almost total failures, but my trials were not 
carefully made as yours no doubt were, and hence lack the 
possibility of drawing very definite conclusions. 
Very 
truly yours. 
WHT/lT 
W. H. Twenhofel 
