Joseph McCabe an Ernst Haeckel, London, [August 1905]
16, Elm Grove.
Cricklewood.
London N.W.
Dear Professor Haeckel,
I am sorry that you have not been able to come over here this summer, but hope to see you at Paris next week. In any case we will trust that you may be able to come to our annual dinner next February.
In the Anthropogenie (Fig. 14) you point out that the spermatozoa have to pass through the pores in the ovolemma to penetrate into the cytoplasm. A lecturer here (who is no authority) has been exhibiting a picture of || an ovum with a fairly broad opening in the side – a large piece cut out of the ovolemma, as it were – for the spermatozoa to pass through. Is he not wrong in representing this as a diagram of a human ovum? I understand that, there are some ova with a pyle or opening for the spermatozoa, but is it not the case that in the human ova the spermatozoa must go through the fine pores shown on Fig. 14.?
Could you at the same time tell me the name of a Berlin publisher who is likely to take a free-thought work? An American friend has had a book of his translated into German. I shall be very much obliged.
Yours very truly
Joseph McCabe