John Murray an Ernst Haeckel, Glasgow, 15. Januar 1891
15 January 1891
14 Blythswood Square,
Glasgow.
My dear Haeckel
My wife has not been very well for the last ten days so I have been detained here: however we hope to get back to our home in Edinburgh next week as she is now nearly well again.
I have read carefully your „Plankton Studien”, and think it is all in the right lines. I have no objections to what || you say about the different kinds of currents, but they would need some further explanations and expansions.
My idea is that the great feeding ground in the ocean is just where fine mud and silt commences to settle on the bottom. Myriads of crustaceans and other animals here live on the small particles of organic matter that are setting. Herrings, Salmon, Whales || also go down to this „mud line” to feed, and sometimes the animals from this region are carried to the surface in enormous numbers during storms or by strong and unusual currents. However it would be a good thing for us to have a talk about all these matters before you publish your new edition. I am going to have the „Medusa” out this summer and || if you could come to Scotland, I am sure I could show you some very interesting work in the Deep Lochs of the West coast. I could show you how different the hauls with the tow-nets are at different depths and under different conditions. Bring your daughter and Mrs Haeckel and arrange to stay a month or six weeks at least. You could || make a splendid collection of animals for your museum, for we get no end of animals in our dredgings. We would take a house on the west coast and would return every day to the house. These deep Lochs are very interesting for we have an approach to deep sea conditions in them.
I’ll be glad to send you clichés || of any of the Challenger cuts. I think it would be a good thing to publish an English Edition of your Plankton work.
I have notes about the things obtained in the tow nets during every day of the „Challenger” voyage and some of these may contain information to confirm the views about the || distribution of the classes of marine things.
When do you propose to publish your new edition? During or after this summer? If not till after you visit Scotland this year, then we can go into the matter here. If you intend to publish before that I could, perhaps, pay you a short || visit in April, for I may require to be on the Continent before May next.
All the Challenger duplicates have been sent to the British Museum. You can see them there if you are in London, but there are very few not required for the national collection.
Yours sincerely
John Murray ||
P. S. If you do think of coming to Scotland this summer for six weeks, (and I hope you will seriously entertain the proposal) when do you think you would come?
My wife expects the baby in May, and our intention is to take a house on the west coast a of Scotland close to the sea || sometime in June for three months. The „Medusa” would be available for work all that time.
Think over the matter and let me know if there will be any chance of seeing you here.
J. M.
a gestr.: coast