25th March, 1955.
Dear Dr. Commoner,
Thank you very much for amending and returning my manuscript so promptly.  I am now sending you what is, I hope, the final version.  I am posting it to "Nature" today.
As you will see, I have done a lot of re-writing.  I accepted your invitation to condense what you wrote, and I hope I have not damaged it too much in the process.   At the same time, I was reluctant to believe that there was a major structural difference between the B8 and Rich's material, such as would account for the different optical properties.  So I sent a telegram to Rich, and got an answer saying that he finds he made a mistake about the sign.  The new version therefore puts less emphasis on the difference between my results and his, and his statement that his dry material was positive will be deleted.
Thank you for the new supply of B8, which has arrived safely.  I have put some in the camera today, and will let you know if I get anything new.  However, under the microscope it looks rather like what I got by evaporating the solution.  The birefringence is very low, and the gel is not homogeneous.  So it looks as though it really is less readily orientated than TMV.  If the result is no different from before, I will post the remainder of this new specimen back to you.
In my last letter I said that I had an orientated specimen of Takahashi's polymerised X.  I regret to say that what I had was orientated buffer salt!  Later I evaporated to dryness some of his dialyzed solution, and was left with only a very small stain -- his solution was too dilute to give me anything I could work with.
Yours sincerely,
Rosalind Franklin