We are both very sorry to learn that the state of your health, as well as Mrs Haeckel’s, will not permit you to visit us in Scotland this summer. We should have been very glad could we have been able to cheer you [up] in any way after your courageous labours. What you say about your „Erinnerungen” || shows that your power for work is not yet exhausted! We hope you will be spared many years yet, ‒ a splendid and most interesting „fossil”!! I have been reading your life which I duly received from Fisher Unwin, also your last Berlin lectures which I very specially admire for their plain outspoken language. We will speak of your splendid courage when you are no more.
I duly received your || „Wanderbilder” and they have given great pleasure to my family. My oldest boy now goes out shooting with me and my eldest girl is as tall as I am. I am glad to say I am in very good health. My doctor told me I should give up the microscope for fully two years, and live as much in the open air as possible. That is one reason why I undertook the survey of the Scottish Fresh-water-lakes. We have now surveyed many || hundreds. The results are being published in four volumes, ‒ some results very interesting. When this is finished Iʼll take up again my book on the „Floor of the Ocean.”
The little piece of phosphate which I discovered by the microscopea in a coral reef and was certain it was never formed in the sea, led to the discovery of a great phosphate bed, 1,000 feet above the sea-level. This is now being exploited, and if the present indications are confirmed by further explorations, I may in five or six years be a „well off” man so far as money goes! But like you I feel old age coming on!
