April 23 1907

Dear Prof. Osborn:-

Your letter together with one from Dr. Matthew and a lot of papers from Mr. Wendell came out to camp today.

Let me thank you first for your very kind letter to Mrs. Granger. I think she is feeling much more at rest now, although my leaving her this winter has been very depressing for her.

We are just about ready to leave for Cairo. The weather today is very fine but the past week has been very exhausting. I thought I had seen hot weather in America but I never had. Hot winds from the desert and the South west are what has most uncomfortable. We return feeling the disappointment of not getting the fine Arsinoitherium skull but otherwise I think our collection is a good one. If Markgraf continues prospecting as he now intends he is sure to run across a skull sooner or later. It's unreasonable to suppose that there are no more to be had. We have come very near finding one twice. Once it was too young and the other time too much eroded.

Markgraf has already returned to the desert. I saw his trail near here yesterday. Apparently he came in the day we moved down from the old camp.

No new finds of special importance have been made but several good things have been collected since my last letter. There is a fine large skull of a Crocodilus, a good (?) skull and an important portion of a skull of either a large Creodont or a Moeritherium. I could not quite determine which. If it is the latter it will enable us to restore the front of the other skull.

Here in the middle Eocene we find that Dr. Andrews has secured the layers pretty thoroughly. In the two days we have prospected though we have found a complete turtle, a very good pair of Moeritherium jaws with molars and premolars and complete symplyses and angular and condylar regions, also a fair skull of (?). We find a good many fragmentary bones here. Some of which are worth saving. That peculiar appearance of these middle Eocene bones is caused by weathering. Bones in the matrix are in good shape.

I hope you will approve of my having as I am planning. If there weren't a good prospect of getting a skull from Markgraf I should try and remain until we did get one. I spoke to Captain Lyons of staying as long as the weather would permit and he advised we not remain longer than April. Dr. Andrews was here in June but the men say that he spent a large part of the time in the tent.

We go into Tamia tomorrow and shall be in Cairo by the 25th or 26th at latest. We have thirteen bones ready for shipment and shall pack the balance in the museum at Cairo. There will be between twenty and twenty five medium sized cases. They are made well and we are packing them as carefully as we know how.

The Anglo-Egyptian Bank informs me that Lstg. 102, 16, 7 have been placed at my disposal through their Lenders Office, so I am well off for funds now. In fact I shall not have to use much of the last deposit, unless I pay freight charges in Alexandria.

Yours with regard and respect,

Walter Granger