This, however, was not so obvious to Burr himself. The letter he sent in reply to Jefferson must have been most disappointing in this respect. The colonel side-stepped the issue, refused to come out frankly and did not write a single line that could be constructed as an acceptance of Jefferson's point of view. On December 31, Jefferson wrote to Tench Coxe to express his opinion that an agreement between the two higher candidates was their only hope "to prevent the dissolution of the Government and a danger of anarchy, by an operation, bungling indeed and imperfect, but better than letting the Legislature take the nomination of the Executive entirely from the people."[408] This could have been construed as a hint to Burr to give up his unavowed hopes of becoming President. But Burr, who was in New York, could not easily be communicated with and kept his sphinxlike silence. January passed without Jefferson's finding any necessity of writing any political letters. With Hugh Williamson he discussed the range of temperature in Louisiana and whether the turkey was a native bird:[409] with William Dunbar the temperature, Indian vocabularies and the origin of the rainbow. In February, however, he again wrote to Burr. He had been informed that certain individuals were attempting "to sow tares between us that might divide us and our friends." He assured Burr that he had never written anything that could be regarded as injurious by his running mate; the only time that he had discussed his conduct was in a letter to Breckenridge written on December 18, in which he had expressed the conviction that the wishes of the people were that he and not Burr be President. That was a pure statement of fact at which no man could take offense. This time, Burr apparently did not answer at all, and while the House was preparing for the balloting, Jefferson discussed with Caspar Wistar the bones found in the State of New York, "the vertebra, part of the jaw, with two grinders, the tusks, which some have called the horns, the sternum, the scapula, the tibia and fibula, the tarsus and metatarsus, and even the phalanges and innominata."[410]