SOURCE: "Letters of a Scientist," in The Nation, New York, Vol. 117, No. 3044, November 7, 1923, pp. 527-28.

In the following review of The Story of the Development of a Youth, Smertenko considers the book as a key to understanding the later Haeckel.

"Exactly that which people despise and tread under foot as contemptible, inferior dirt, the green slime on old wood lying in the water, the turbid foam on the surface of the mire, does not my microscope prove these things to be just the most magnificent and most marvelous forms of creation? Never, by the way, have I missed my beloved microscope so painfully as in those days when the waters of the mountains offered me so much and such new material, animal and vegetable, for my microscope. So, thereupon, I took a solemn oath never, no matter how great the possible difficulty in the way, even on journeys...