Edward Laurens Mark an Ernst Haeckel, Cambridge, 25. Januar 1894
E. L. MARK
21 NORTH AVE.
ZOÖLOGICAL LABORATORY, HARVARD UNIVERSITY,
CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U.S.A., Jan. 25. 1894
Dear Professor Haeckel,
I have just received the circular a which announces the intention of your friends and scholars to commenorate your approaching birth-day. Although this information comes so late, I am grateful that it has come in time to allow me to share in the pleasure of the event.
My mind turns back some 18 years, to the spring of 1876, and a feeling of joy fills me, as I recall the happy days which I passed in your laboratory and the Prinzessingarten near at hand. I shall not soon forget my first visit to Jena and how, when I repressed a desire to continue my zoological studies there, you advised me not to do so, saying that there really was nothing in such a little place as Jena worth coming for!
How well I remember the day you first showed me your Museum, remarking that your collections were not extensive, but that you had observed that the productiveness of a Museum was often inversely proportional to the size of the collections. – If your admiration of Dana’s “Zoöphytes” was tempered with the remark in your lectures that it had been published “mit grossem Luxus von Papier”, the lesson was not wholly lost on your only American auditor, who took it less as a criticism on an all-two-prevalent condition of affairs on this side the Atlantic, than as a hint that ideas were of more value to science than fine pictures!
But while others hasten to do you honor for the honor you have yourself been to Zoölogy, and wihle I gladly join them in expressions of respect and admiration, and own the stimulus that your writungs have been to me, I beg the privilege of assuring you that it is the personal side of your character that has been to me a constant source of pleasant recollections.
Believe me your sincere admirer and well-wisher,
E. L. Mark.
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