Page:Percival Lowell - an afterglow.djvu/179

An Afterglow

Thank you for your letter just come and for the sympathy in it if "it is." The news came to us in a day's ago wire from the N. Y. T. to know if we had heard of the new comet discovered by Sola. That it was a planet we had no inkling till I opened your letter. So far the news is so vague that we have no hint where to look for it. Pisces is large. 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.

We also bagged a J. megalocarpa berry 16 mm. across (1 inch=25.4 mm.). Judge Doe meanwhile was speeding in his car and trailer Kirkland wise to bag quail.

Today quite a snow-storm on the Peaks, practically the first. It is a late and warm season, for, five years ago on Oct. 12 when I ascended the 141