Wrexie Louise Leonard

“ A jack-rabbit now inhabits the Observatory grounds. I have twice flushed him from his precious night's couch in the hollow under the crest that overlooks the mill; and twice failed in snap-shotting him with my camera. Coyote tracks are in evidence everywhere but I have not seen the beasts in the flesh.
Our Saturn studies progress; we have missed but one night since I arrived, though two of the others have not been much. Curtis snow-shoes everywhere and I enclose a shot I took of him measuring the depth of the snow just under the west hill where you found one of your arrowheads. ”

“ MARS' HILL Two pictures go in this: one of Curtis on his skis, the other of the home of a jack-rabbit we are getting to know quite well. He nipped off the lower buds of some of the fruit trees of Dr. Slipher's, the naughty one, and I have twice seen him. He lives over near the south ridge. I have an uncomfortable feeling that I wrote this and sent you his picture before. No matter. Give the second to whoever likes it. Ditto Curtis.
Today was to be despatched a series of Halley's comet which it will please you to look at; also some Saturns. This season has beaten all others here for snow. ”

“ It is a last quiet study afternoon here, for tomorrow the Limited that we see rolling down to the station below with its long-drawn whistle should be taking me in a moment eastward too.
A tall yellow flower—the single-blossomed one—nods to me out of one window, while Indian paint-brushes blush at me from without the other. There are numbers of the last this year, more than I ever saw before. Paint-brush Point you remember—where the earliest are found is carpeted with them and from the rock where the very first always appear. ”

“ After 12 inches of snow had fallen the sky made show of opening up, then hesitated and finally after sundown began slowly to emerge to the northeast between Elden and the Peaks and so roll back the clouds to the S. W. During which a surface west wind blew. The Zodiacal Light was conspicuous and the stars very brilliant though really blurred.
MARS' HILL It does one good to hear pleasant things. It is like a ray of sunshine on a stormy day. ”

“ LOWELL OBSERVATORY
FLAGSTAFF
After a spell of ten days of impossibility of observation, Mr. E. C. Slipher and I began again last night and finding the seeing not so good as we had expected went to bed to rise again early this morning. He is now developing one of the photographs we took this A. M. The canals are ever so much more evident than they were last opposition. Soon I shall send you prints of drawings and photographs.
Plate has just been developed; canals show fairly well about the eye of Mars. ”

“ The proof that there is no illusion consists in the fact that only at the moments of very great steadiness could the detail be seen:—canals and all. If the effect were the result of optical illusion, it should have appeared on other nights and on last night it should have been present even when the disc was only fairly steady.
The reality is exactly the contrary. To see this finer detail demands the maximum of steadiness, and therefore the appearance when seen is that of the true markings of Mars. ”

“ If Sola is right in saying, or being quoted as saying, that it has a rapid retrograde motion, it cannot be a far planet.
On Wednesday last Mr. Lampland and I went in the red car juniper hunting with success and pleasure. We started down the old Cosnino road, to the edge of Turkey Hill's mesa and thence to Winona and beyond. The berries in the latter spot on J. utahensis were something to make one stare. They covered the branches in solid masses, outdoing grapes by 100%. I never saw such fruit profusion. When the prints of my photographs dry you shall have a faint idea of what we saw. ”

“ Bearing upon Mars, on the rectilinear appearance of the canals, is the clipping enclosed which will interest you and Morse if he drops in. It explains why the lines do not appear as curved as they should. The eye rectifies them.
My lectures are to be a wedding of Earth to Mars through geology. In consequence I have been devouring works on the subject of our own Earth's history, both English and French.
One makes curious visual acquaintances in the courts of these French hotels. There is a man over the enclosed way who spends his time at little else than trimming and brushing his hair! ”

“ On Thursday last I was the guest of the Royal Society Club—the inner circle of the Royal Society—at dinner. I sat at the right of the president of the Club, Sir Clifford Allbutt, and Sir David Prain, the Director of the Royal Gardens, Kew, on mine. After the sweets and the regulation toasts, they got me to talk; and I showed them some of the slides, passed round the table. Tonight I dine with Prof. Boys at his club, the Saville. Thursday I leave for the Hotel Chatham, Paris.
Dr. Slipher's cable arrived very apropos "Spectrograms show Virgo Nebula rotating." ”

“ They hit the astronomical observations better than they wot, for yesterday morning Mr. Slipher did get a photograph of Saturn and Mars in the same field, a very pretty one.
So the conjunction was immortalized all right.
The nasturiums in one of the flower troughs are fine, those in the garden not so good. The sweet peas seem to have grown tired, but the zinnias are a joy. ”

“ MARS HILL Wood-betony in flower now all over the place. And the house bulbs are in fine show. Lots of sun-flowers in the plain at the bottom of Clark's Gulf, northeast of the house. Snow only in the most sheltered retreats faint and few.
Even the Alp on the peaks is now only patched with what was seven feet deep on the level.
LOWELL OBSERVATORY
FLAGSTAFF
Please send us the best and biggest pumpkin seed and seeds of the weirdest and most extraordinary gourds you can. The crop thanks you in advance
LOWELL OBSERVATORY
FLAGSTAFF
We all think the type and printing of the memoir beautiful. ”

“ Slipher's article in the Scientific American nor of mine in the Astronomical Journal appear.
The prints just come of the 1914 globe of mine are on the whole very good, but in the 0° meridian one the whole top (south) , i. e., the seas are too light especially the Sæbasus Sinus and ditto for the 90° meridian one. Perhaps it is not in the globe but a question of negative or printing.
During my last days in Paris I went to the Palais Royal Theatre to see "Jóse pas," a timid young man who in consequence gets into many scrapes. Exceedingly funny and unnecessarily coarse. ”

“ Deslandres yesterday, at a lunch he gave me, quite enthusiastically complimentary about the Lowell Ob'y. work. Cela marche, méme ca court.
Thank you I am better and the weather has been absolutely cold; have had to sit in my parlor with my overcoat on. Hardly a too warm hour since I landed in England.
Gale, of comet fame, on his way from his native Australia, New South Wales, to London, was at Deslandres' lunch and wanted information about setting up a solar observatory.
There are fewer foreigners abroad this year than usual another proof of hard times. ”

“ Shortly I hope to send you more of Mars' pictures. We have had the worst season I have ever known, not one first-class day so far and only one or two second-class ones. East winds on end. What folks characterize as beautiful weather and worse than a storm for sight.
I hope Thanksgiving in the far woods was ideal.
Here there has been no snow as yet. Even the peaks which some three weeks ago took on a lacelike mantle have allowed almost all of it to fret away. ”

“ BOSTON This is the nearest echo of the den. I hope the newly planted flowers are up and the others upper. A pleasing postcard signed by several French people greeted me here expressing their enjoyment in reading Mars et ses Canaux and looking forward to more this year.
FLAGSTAFF April 5. Snow on the continental divide, on the ground and falling—train on time at Albuquerque, one hour late at Flag. Flag colder than I had supposed it would be. ”

“ YORK, MAINE A U. S. gunboat has just passed leisurely in the offing. The baby crop of browntails is just out of the egg. Found them this morning. I passed a pleasant day Thursday-Friday at the Putnam's Manchester.
BOSTON Your telegram arrived yesterday—I am glad everything went off well including the weather. We have been having an amazing hot spell, two days of 90°.
I picked up the northern comet the other evening with the naked eye—night before last and verified it with the glass. It is brightening and moving west fast.
LOWELL OBSERVATORY
FLAGSTAFF ”

“ Snow, snow, snow ! You never saw anything like it. Mr. Lampland thinks we must have slipped our latitude and I am sure the Pole has moved. A blinding blizzard this morning almost worthy of Dakota.
Yesterday Mr. E. C. Slipher and Mr. Gill ascended the Peaks as far as the edge of the Alp on skis. Mr. Slipher reported the snow on it as at least seven feet deep. His ski pole would not touch bottom. He saw a cottontail just below the open- ing, the highest point yet for a cottontail.
On their way out in the morning they flushed a jack-rabbit just this side of the 40 inch. ”

“ It is a poverty-stricken flora one sees here especially in town;—plane-tree, plane-tree and again plane-tree, until one wishes all were not so plane. I have become possessed of a most excellent English book on trees, native and imported, quite the best, everything considered, and shall I say quite as good as our best ”

“ I suddenly just now on a walk flushed or rather saw, my attention roused by a slight sound, a coyote shackeled by one of our traps. Two weeks ago this trap, set for a coyote, disappeared and nothing had been heard from it. I turned instinctively and there was a large brown coyote shambling along dragging a trap. It was in the little valley just this side of the outer Southern ridge of the home place. I started after him and found he could go nearly as fast as I could. So I made for the shop, roused the men and we in posse went to surround the little copse on the second rise. ”

“ The tree was the one I discovered in Oak Creek but that was fruitless. The spot was also a walnut grove but the nuts resembled pig nuts rather than the nut of Jove (Juglans) . After eating a frugal lunch we toiled back. I should have said that our introduction to the strange flora came in the guise of a J. pachyphlora (you recall the noble one at the head of the little amphitheatre) but with enormous fruit, the berries reaching 15mm. in diameter. Think how a tree laden with them would look in Boston in a park.
LOWELL OBSERVATORY
FLAGSTAFF
Thank you for the photographs. ”

“ I knew you would like to be kept abreast of the flora.
Will you please have several more complete sets of prints made of the various globes of Mars.
Now that we have got into the planet's own month the time for leaving him draws near. However here it has been spring for some time; while in Boston it is polar. So one feels well off in being far off.
A little white bull we had here when I came, and which I sent away, was killed just under Elden Mt. on the south by mountain lions the other day.
LOWELL OBSERVATORY
FLAGSTAFF
Am bringing back many photographs of tracks ”

“ I have accepted and shall leave Chicago Sunday, arriving in New York Monday morning and probably Tuesday at 6 P. M. reach Boston.
Mr. Gill who left here Thursday expressed a wish to be present, at which I was pleased.
MARS' HILL Oh! I am sorry about the eye and more than glad that the pin missed the mark. "Pins may have saved the lives of a great many people by not swallowing them" but they are dangerous things for all that. ”

“ The next day he brought round the president of the local Astronomical Society who did everything you can conceive of and more, beginning with an automobile trip that afternoon, an introduction to the Manager of his Automobile Club and the hiring thus of a car under the best auspices for my tour through the Cevennes and ending with a grand lunch the next day at his chateau after miles out of town. And on my arrival here, behold a case of wine to greet me! Really on me pourait mieuoc. Hospitality becomes a weak word in comparison. ”

“ You shall have prints of both my and Mr. E. C. S.'s drawings. This was the night before Professor Willson arrived, since then no seeing to speak of and a great snow storm.—Nevertheless he has seen many Canals ill and one Canal well. He feels he is getting on. He always believed but is now seeing for himself. The blue belt about the shrinking cap was one thing he particularly wished to see and that he has seen. He has been exorcising the imps who make bad seeing and is happy and calm.
LOWELL OBSERVATORY
FLAGSTAFF
Bravo! ”