July 21, 1959
Dear Syd:

The particudlar thing | want to ask you about is for some procurement
details on one of your high-pressure autoclaves for adjunct laboratory
use. Can you send enough information (prices, delivery, ppeci fications, )
for us to place an order by return mail? We have access to either 115 V.
or 206 ¥. as requirec.

Gus willbe arriving Inabout a month now; the Gibsons have been here
but rushed down to Pacific Grove and we haven't seen them yet. It will be
old home week sogn for us Auasies. {8 (Considering the numter of palm
trees, Bunya-Bunya and Norfold Island Pines, and not to mention the gums
and wattles that are plented all over the vicinity here you'd herdly know
we were any place else.)

As you know, we arrived here about February |, but were in Europe a good
part of this spring, and we are only just beginning to feel settled in. Buc
it's a very congenial and stimdating place to be, and we look forward to many
happy years here, Our lab. is still a temporary (though in a new building)
but we hope to be moving into the newly finished medical center within a
matter of days now. The same sort of work as ever -- Hirota !s hkaxknag going
great guns with removing F and some new cases of F-coupled genes with acridine
orange; Esther is crossing SalmonellJa x coli, ard so on,

| nave nad to spend a little time on nelping to straighten out microbiology
in relation to space research, and finally feel optimistic about having
gotten somewhere, at least as far as the US is concerned, I have no idea
how the Russians feel about the same problem, or even if they've so much as
considered it. It will be a Jittle while yet, mx but probably only of the
order of 5 or 10 years before either country has the capability for a soft
landing on a pianet; | hope we will have been forearmed for the emma event
mx with some prepared Ideas and equipment for remote-gontrol detection f
microblota. This Is a program that really should have an International base,
and | nope the aman means to realize this do sooner or later evolve.

Sir Mac and | kept popping dp at the same meetings all over Europe, { have
to tell you that we didn't hear anything that is really at all damaging to
the mutation-selection hypotnesis of antibody formation. [I've become so accus-
tomed to hearing myself say this that I'm beginning to Lelieve in its material
correctness, not as a mere formalism. I've elaborated the idea along some
particular lines In a paper that just appeared in Science -- | hope this may
make it more apalatable to you.

We have been sorry to hear that Ellen has been ill, and we know this must
be a great straln. Our earnest best wishes to all of you.

Say nello to Bob and Bruce and.....

Yours,