Transcribe Hornaday, W. T. Letter to Ward, Henry A. (1876-03-06)

we all voted the handsomest. They are all white, quartz inside apparently with a sort of soft lime crust on the outside, not </u very > large, will average about 6 or 8 lbs each..

    While circumnavigating Monus one

morning we entered a rocky amplutheatre called Bay of Biscay, where I got about a ^quart^ of sand and some rocks for W. & H. also. The sand is black as tar, and will be used some </s th > day to adulterate gunpowder. It would sell for gunpowder as it is. The rooks attracted my attention very decidedly , and if I were a geologist would consider them valuable to a cabinet. Of course I am fearful all along that what geological specimens I am getting will not prove valuable to you, but I know you will kindly make allowances for my mistakes in that direction, so I go on doing as well as I know how.

    The rocks I took are flattish pieces, smooth

& symmetrical, of a sort of blue slate having a very peculiar network of quartz running all through with something like regularity as to distribution, and the pure white veins of quartz in the blue stone makes them quite attractive to my eye. The pieces are all between 2 & 3 inches thick, and I have four or five of them, about 8 x 12 in. average.

    A 40 foot, black-backed whale was

caught four miles from where we were stopping the last day we were at the islands. We went to see it, and I could scarcely give up the idea of taking the skeleton. At first I determined we would, it was such a capital opportunity, but I got to reasoning the thing out when it came to the pinch, and conclu-