specimens if you can prevent their being defaced for a month or two until I shall visit Greenfield I shall be much obliged to you.

            Accept my thanks for your trouble & believe me respectfully & sincerely yours

                                    E Hitchcock

            Extract of another letter dated Sept. 21^st 1835

            Dear Sir,

                        Yours of the 17^th instant is received & I am obliged to you for its contents.  I think your views are quite correct as to the tracks: but it will require decided evidence to convince geologists because it places birds so much lower in the rocks than they have heretofore been discovered.  Hence I feel anxious to get a full view of the case before describing it  &c.

           

            Extract from another dated Sept. 15^th 1835- 

I hope to get ready a paper on the subject for the January No. of Sillimans Journal of Sci. in which I shall not fail to acknowledge my indebtedness to you for the first discovery.  I wish to make a thorough examination before committing myself in public: for from the nature of the case I know that geologists will  try all they can to disbelieve the facts!