Charles Darwin an Ernst Haeckel, Down, 20. September 1874
Down, | Beckenham, Kent.
Sep 20th. 74
My dear Häckel
I received this morning the 5th Editn of yr Schopfung Geschichte & I thank you for your neverfailing very kind remembrance of me. What grand success your books have had, & I am delighted to see your name continually quoted in all parts of the world with high approbation. I am always astonished at the || ammount of work you do, I am never idle, but I believe you do as much work in a day as I in a week. I have been going on with my experiments on plants, chiefly on their digestive power, which is exactly the same as in mammals. What our gastric juice can digest so can the secretion of certain plants: what we cannot digest they cannot. I hope to go to press on this subject in the winter. Besides this subject anda preparing a revised || edit of the Descent of Man I have done nothing else for the last year. In one of your former letters you said that you had some new ideas & corrections with respect to the hypothesis which I have called Pangenesis; I hope that you will some time publish them & let me have a copy. If you have ever an idle quarter of an hour, I should much like to hearb where you have been, & what you have been doing this summer.
Believe me my dear Häckel
Yours very sincerely
Charles Darwin
P.S. Since this note was written & closed, I have received to my astonishment, another great Book!! your Anthropogenie. I shall read as much as I can of this, & what an evil it is that I never shall be able to read German with any ease. Good Heavens, take care that you do not wear out your brain. –
a korr. aus: I am; b korr. aus: here