My dear Douglass:



I am very glad to receive your letter of December the first in which you inform me that you are shortly to forward the chart of the quarry and the record book.  We are much in need of these.  



I have just returned from Philadelphia where I saw Dr. Merrill of the U.S. National Museum.  Merrill is annoyed by a deries of letter from Pack, of the University of Utah, and from your recent letter you seem to think that the United State Government had no right to take certain portions of the Diplodocus skeleton formt he land which belongs to the Government.  This Government may, and doubtless idd injure the specimen which the University of Utah desired to take out, but the University of Utah at the time the National Museum was working there had absolutely no claim upon the quarry.  My advice to you is to keep out of this row.  It is now of your business what Utah does, and it is very much the business of the Carnegie Museum to keep on the best of terms with the U.S. Department of the Interior.  I am sure that in the future we will want favors from that Department, which can only be granted with the sanction of the Secretary of the     Institution.  From my information you have already put yourself in wrong wiht the secretary and I do not wish you to put this Institution in wrong.



Director Carnegie Museum