That was quite a budget. I'm still arguing with some friends of mine, who think they're geologists, about petrified trees that are still standing. I think that the dead tree trunks absorbed silicifying solutions from the soil, by capillary action.
My books are freaks in several ways. You see, I came to my present interests by way of other kinds of writing, I used to be a short-story writer, and I developed a theory of impressionistic writing: but that seems foreign to my present subjects. It is a phenomenon of transition. My next book will probably have in it little stylistic treatment.
The datum of the iron ring is from the "St. Louis Globe-Democrat", March 4, 1891— that, in solid clay, below the coal, in No. 20 shaft, at Osage, Kansas, John McLeod had found an iron ring.
I note that, in relation to an observation of yours upon lights in the sky, you mention Grass Valley, Cal. It is worth while watching for news from that place. Last April, somebody sent me a clipping upon long-continued "mysterious detonations" heard in Grass Valley.
Truly,
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