You have made an immense leap in the association of forms, and I cannot but suppose you approach the final solution...

I have always fancied that it was rather brains and boldness, than eyes or microscopes that the mycologists wanted, and that there was more brains in Berkeley’s [Reverend M.J.  Berkeley.] crude discoveries than in the very best of the French and German microscopic verifications of them, who filch away the credit of them from under Berkeley’s nose, and pooh-pooh his reasoning, but for which we should be, as we were.

In his Presidential Address, “Biogenesis and Abiogenesis” ("Collected Essays” 8 page 229), he discussed the rival theories of spontaneous generation and the universal derivation of life from precedent life, and professed his belief, as an act of philosophic faith, that at some remote period, life had arisen out of inanimate matter, though there was no evidence that anything of the sort had occurred recently, the germ theory explaining many supposed cases of spontaneous generation.  The history of the subject, indeed, showed] “the great tragedy of Science—­the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact—­which is so constantly being enacted under the eyes of philosophers,” and recalled the warning “that it is one thing to refute a proposition, and another to prove the truth of a doctrine which, implicitly or explicitly, contradicts that proposition.”

[Two letters to Dr. Dohrn refer to this address and to the meeting of the Association.]

Jermyn Street, April 30, 1870.

My dear Whirlwind,

I have received your two letters; and I was just revolving in my mind how best to meet your wishes in regard to the very important project mentioned in the first, when the second arrived and put me at rest.

I hope I need not say how heartily I enter into all your views, and how glad I shall be to see your plan for “Stations” carried into effect. [Dr. Dohrn succeeded in establishing such a zoological “station” at Naples.] Nothing could have a greater influence upon the progress of zoology.

A plan was set afoot here some time ago to establish a great marine Aquarium at Brighton by means of a company.  They asked me to be their President, but I declined, on the ground that I did not desire to become connected with any commercial undertaking.  What has become of the scheme I do not know, but I doubt whether it would be of any use to you, even if any connection could be established.

As soon as you have any statement of your project ready, send it to me and I will take care that it is brought prominently before the British public so as to stir up their minds.  And then we will have a regular field-day about it in Section D at Liverpool.

Let me know your new ideas about insects and vertebrata as soon as possible, and I promise to do my best to pull them to pieces.  What between Kowalesky and his Ascidians, Miklucho-Maclay [A Russian naturalist, and close friend of Haeckel’s, who later adventured himself alone among the cannibals of New Guinea.] and his Fish-brains, and you and your Arthropods, I am becoming schwindelsuchtig, and spend my time mainly in that pious ejaculation “Donner and Blitz,” in which, as you know, I seek relief.  Then there is our Bastian who is making living things by the following combination:—­