Dear Mr. Darwin!

It has become a privilege of the Zool. Station to congratulate you on your birthday.¹ Last year I was unable to do it by letter,—at least I was unwilling to do it, because I wished to tell something definitively about the position of the Zool. Station, and could not do it on account of the unfinished state of my negotiations with the German Government.²

Today I am able to add to my own and the congratulation of all the Naturalists assembled in the Station the good news, that a new subvention of £.1500 is added to our regular income, and that I have good reason to retain it as an annual grant, though the formal and legal assurance of it, is still to be got. Parliament and Federal Council have both consented to place that sum on the Budget of the German Foreign Office, and I shall have to go to Berlin next month, to get it put down on the regular expenses of that Budget,—an achievement which will get the Zool. Station completely safe, and guarantee our considerable annual expenses.

The Zool. Station will now be able to concentrate all its energies to the direct scientific work, to the development of all sorts of technical methods of fishing, preserving, etc. and to the best ways of rendering the considerable amount of scientific material accessible to the best hands for working at it.

It is almost ten years, when I had for the first and only time the honour of talking to you.³ I daresay I did not quite anticipate the difficulties of the enterprise, of which I told you at that time. You did, and you did still more, some years after in helping me over the deadlock,—I may say the first deadlock.⁴

I have always remembered your exceedingly kind letter, which you wrote to me at that time, when my purse and my nerves were equally exhausted.⁵ It is therefore my great satisfaction to be able to give the above news, and to add to it once more my heartfelt thanks for the sympathy and material help, which you and your sons at that most critical moment bestowed upon me.

At present we are again twenty Naturalists in the Station, and there is a new Government added to the list of the supporters, Belgium.⁶ All our technical and scientific apparatus has been largely developed in the past year, scientific diving has been practised with great success, and almost twenty larger Monographs on the Ctenophorae, Fierasfer, Pycnogonidae, Planariae, Nemertinae, Actiniae, Balanoglossus, Sipunculoidae Caprellidae, Capitellidae, Echinodermata and several families of Algae are in course of preparation, two will soon be published forming the beginning of a large periodical publication “Fauna & Flora of the Gulf of Naples and neighbouring seas.”⁷

If all fits in,—if we are especially not drowned in a great European war,⁸—then I hope to give soon proof of a very active scientific life, and I wish to be able to present for many coming years the congratulations of the Zoological Station together with the results of its action to your birthday,—and I hope you will kindly allow of this liberty as hitherto so also in future.

With my kindest compliments to Mrs. Darwin and to Mr. Frank and George Darwin | believe me | Yours most respectfully | Anton Dohrn

To | Charles Darwin Esq. | Down.