Sir

I received yesterday the sheets of the second vol. but, notwithstanding this mark of kindness I cannot help thinking that something is going wrong, and I should be most thankful if You will not leave me in the dark and write a line saying what the matter is.² It is very likely that in my connextions in London I have offended somebody or in any way infringed against the rules of English propriety, but believe me I have not the slightest idea of any offence and should be very glad if a word from You explain it. As the fall of Paris is coming near I am quite ready to hurry there at the first sign of capitulation to help my sister in law, as her position there, especially if her husband be killed, wounded or taken prisoner, shall be very difficult.³ Beeing so near England I think I’ll go for a week to London and perhaps settle the matter personally if You will be only kind enough to inform me where my wrong lies. Not wishing to bother You about me personally, I have only to add some facts which my brother wished I should state to You. He is still at the Red Sea and intends to settle there for six monts.—⁴

One of the chief objections to the generalisation of Ascidian larvae with vertebrates was the uncertainty about the nervous system; he dissected now a quantity of larval forms and found out (as it seems to him) quite a scheme or prototype of the nervous system of vertebrates; namely in the tail of the larvae there is a chain of nervous ganglia consisting each of two pairs of nervous cells, one pair of cells is unipolar, the other multipolar; the multipolar nervous cells give nervous threads only to the skin (sensitive) the unipolar cells give threads only to the muscles (locomotive)—quite a parallel of the two radices of man issuing separately from the spine and mixing together in the large ganglion, as illustrated by the known experiment of lousing in one foot of the frog the sensibility, in the other the locomotion, by cutting on both sides different radices.—⁵

To add a word more, I really could not profit by Your kindness any more in case You have any objection against me personally, so that I must really pray You not to send me any proof-sheets more in case my fears about an unexplicable change in Your relations to me is realised; Still I hope that there is a misunderstanding or perhaps something laid to my charge of which I have not the least suspicion; every man has a right not to be judged without accusation and without appeal, and I esteem to high the advantage of Your personal aquaintance to let it drop without doing all effort to maintain it.

Believe me | most truly Yours | W. Kowalevsky

Should You favour me with a line pray adress it Berlin, Anatomisches Museum der Universität