Crosslet,
Dumbartonshire,
A. B.
4 September 1891.
My Dear Haeckel,
We have been very much grieved to learn of your continued illness: and of course, we understand it would not do to leave home till you are quite restored to health. I hope to learn that your health has much improved by your stay at the thermal wells of Baden Baden. So good luck to you!!
We propose to go to America next spring || and we are not yet quite sure what month we will return. We propose to go to Alaska. What would you say to come with us? We are going by the Canadian Pacific Railway. The British Association meets in August next in Edinburgh, but we are not sure if we will have returned in time for the meeting but we will endeavor to do so. Perhaps, then, you || will come to us in Edinburgh at that time if you can’t go to America, and after the meeting we will spend a month in the country by the sea side.
Lankester was at Millport with me for a few days and was sorry not to see you. He proposes to work there and perhaps I will lend him the Medusa for dredging purposes.
Hensen’s reply has now reached me, and really it is a very weak || production. What are you doing about your new edition? and are you going to have it translated. Hensen knows little or nothing about the extent of the work done by the Challenger with the tow-nets. All our material has never been examined we only sent representative samples to each of the workers like Brady.
I find that the fine close cotton nets that we used, catch all the things that Hensen’s nets catch. || and even smaller things, but of course we only used these nets when we wished to catch the minutest things for examination. In the reports of the National Expeditions I’ve not yet seen anything about the pelagic foraminifera Coccospheres and Rhabdospheres- I suppose they captured these.
To-morrow I go away to some of the northern lochs on the west coast in the „Medusa” and in my father in laws yacht I may take a run out for 150 miles into the || Atlantic to try the new nets so as to compare with our Challenger results. I have had about a dozen nets made with the Swiss silk. Nos 5. 18. and 20. I propose also to have analyses made of some of the captures. If you have any suggestions to make I would be glad to try to carry them out for you, for I will likely employ the „Medusa” || all this winter in making observations on the Plankton in our lochs.
Well I am very sorry you are not to be here for I had looked forward to discussing the whole question and asking you what you thought of a modification of your nomenclature. In the Deep Sea Deposit Report which is nearly ready I have said something about Benthos and Plankton. Agassiz || seems angry that you have made so much of Chun’s work. He says he only took one haul of a deep Sea tow-net.
My wife and the baby are very well and I hope this will find you and all your family in better health and enjoying Baden Baden. With all best remembrances and wishes
Yours sincerely
John Murray