course of a few days I was to proceed to collect. I faithfully followed
the instructions, but without any success. I could detect no plants
whatever,

This result would have settled the case ordinarily, and I would have
said that you were mistaken, as the material submitted by yourself
failed as evidence. But I thought that there was too much internal
evidence of the truth of your story, and having been for many years
an observer in natural history, I had learned that it is often very
difficult for one to acquire the art of properly making examinations,
even though the procedures are of the simplest description. So I
distrusted, not you, but myself, and hence, you may remember, I forsook
all and fled many hundred miles to you from my home with the boxes you
had sent me. In three minutes after my arrival you showed me how to
collect the plants in abundance from the very soil in the boxes that had
traveled so far backward and forward, from the very specimens on which I
had failed to do so.

The trouble was with me--that I went too deep with my needle. You showed
me it was simply necessary to remove the slightest possible amount on
the point of a cambric needle; deposit this in a drop of clean water on
a slide cover with, a covering glass and put it under your elegant 1/5
inch objective, and there were the gemiasmas just as you had described.

I have always felt humbled by this teaching, and I at the time rejoiced
that instead of denouncing you as a cheat and fraud (as some did at that
time), I did not do anything as to the formation of an opinion until I
had known more and more accurately about the subject.

I found all the varieties of the palmellae you described in the boxes,