The kind permission you gave Professor Haeckel that the Biological Journal with the editorship of which he intrusted me, might make its appearance in the world under the victorious banner of your celebrated name, adds to the admiration I always felt for your discoveries the sentiments of deepest thankfulness for the granting of so signal a favour. It shall be my most earnest endeavour that the German Journal under your protection prosper to give you joy as soon as it has overcome the manifold impediments of the outset.¹ The editors of the new periodical would be grateful if you would in any way kindly give them hints or directions or—is it not too temerary to utter any such wishes?—if you occasionally disposed in our favour of some article or aphoristic thought pointing out perhaps some new particularly important field for observation, or any contribution in any shape. Perhaps you are accustomed from time to time to commit notes to some English periodical; if this be the case I should venture the humble demand that you would render it accessible to us and authorise us at the same to reproduce them. The same desire I dare express in reference to the publications of your sons in the field of natural science where they have already given so telling signs of being to follow up the great traditions of your family.²

You might, most honoured Sir, ask with some astonishment what encourages so bold wishes in a correspondent as yet unknown unto you? nothing but the entire devotion which for many years past he has been consecrating to the work of reformation begun by you. I was among the few who first united to smooth the path to the evangely of intellectual deliverance come from England. As early as in 1866 I published a work on genealogical botany in which I strove to show that in the vegetable kingdom too there can be traced a pedigree however deeply branched.³ The indifference, though, with which among us in Germany botanists heedlessly look on the accomplishing scientific revolution caused the book to pass without producing an appreciable effect. Ever since I have been doing my best in periodicals of every description to gain over disciples to the manner of viewing things reconised by you, as well as to refute opponents. Two years ago yielding to the pressure of my publisher I even went as far as trying to open unto larger numbers of readers a view in general outlines of the newly won conception of the universe and beg to join this attempt hoping for your receiving it with kind indulgence.⁴

You will in all likelihood, most honoured Sir, find strange that though having for years been given up to propagating the results and method of your investigations I should so long have foregone giving utterance by letter to the high admiration they struck me with. Without any regret on the account of this omission I may say that it was solely motivated by regard for your time and the conviction that nobody ought less than you to be deprived of any part of leisure by correspondance. My now departing from this well considered principle I trust you will kindly grant in behalf of the young enterprise so wholly depending on your continued benevolence; nothing in fact can more further “the Kosmos” than your agreeing to look on it as an intellectual tie realising your own live connexion with the exceedingly vast number of your admirers in Germany.

With the expression of an illimited veneration and the wish that these lines may find you in best health

I am, Sir, | Yours | respectfully | Ernst Krause

Berlin, N.O. Friedenstrasse | N^o. 10. | 11.3.77.