264 EVOLUTION [Chap. IV 



Letter 188 To F. M tiller. 



Down, Jan. nth [1866]. 



I received your interesting letter of November 5th some 

 little time -ago, and despatched immediately a copy of my 

 Journal of Researches. I fear you will think me troublesome 

 in my offer ; but have you the second German edition of the 

 Origin ? which is a translation, with additions, of the third 

 English edition, and is, I think, considerably improved com- 

 pared with the first edition. I have some spare copies which 

 arc of no use to me, and it would be a pleasure to me to send 

 you one, if it would be of any use to you. You would never 

 require to re-read the book, but you might wish to refer to 

 some passage. I am particularly obliged for your photograph, 

 for one likes to have a picture in one's mind of any one about 

 whom one is interested. I have received and read with 

 interest your paper on the sponge with horny spicula. 1 

 Owing to ill-health, and being busy when formerly well, I 

 have for some years neglected periodical scientific literature, 

 and have lately been reading up, and have thus read trans- 

 lations of several of your papers ; amongst which I have been 

 particularly glad to read and see the drawings of the 

 metamorphoses of Peneus." This seems to me the most 

 interesting discovery in embryology which has been made 

 for years. 



I am much obliged to you for telling me a little of your 

 plans for the future ; what a strange, but to my taste in- 

 teresting life you will lead when you retire to your estate 

 on the Itajahy ! 



You refer in your letter to the facts which Agassiz is 

 collecting, against our views, on the Amazons. Though he 

 has done so much for science, he seems to me so wild and 

 paradoxical in all his views that I cannot regard his opinions 

 as of any value. 



1 " Ueber Darwinclla aurca, einen Schwamm mit sternformigen 

 Hornnadeln." — Archiv. Mikrosk. Anal., I., p. 57, 1866. 



- " On the Metamorphoses of the Prawns," by Dr. Fritz Muller.— Ann. 

 Mag. Nat. Hist., Vol. XIV., p. 104 (with plate), 1864. Translated by 

 \V. S. Dallas from JVirg/nann's Archiv, 1863 (see also Facts and 

 Arguments for Darwin, passim, translated by W. S. Dallas : London, 

 1869). 



