Dear Sir

It is an eternity that I had no news of You, and if from my part I did not write it was for not forcing You into an answer and robbing in this way Your time. The whole winter I worked in the great palaeontological Museum at Münich but chiefly composed of the mesosoic fauna from the Trias to the newest tertiary, I think it is one of the largest collections existing for the Jura and for the much discussed and yet not settled Titonic fauna, holding an intermediate position between the Portland and the Neocomien, perhaps a continental marine equivalent for your Purbeck.² The Belemnites, Ammonitidae³ and the Brachiopoda of the Titonic group have a decidedly cretaceous character and the whole fauna is in many respects intermediate between Jura and the Cretaceous formation,—as for instance the prodigious quantity of large bivalves holding a place between the Diceras arietina of the Upper Jura and the Caprinas of the Untere Kreide.⁴ The whole fauna is even undetermined and not named yet, only the Brachiopoda were published by Suess.⁵ I am quite certain that we will find there many facts supporting Your theory, although he is now so firmly settled as not to require support. As one of the wonderful illustration of it could serve the splendid specimens of the Triassic Turrilites with sutural lobes of the Ceratites existing in a very rich private collection of a certain D^r. Fischer at Munich, they were published by Hauer under the name of Cochloceras.⁶ They are very rare, and I doubt if the British Museum have specimens of them. By and by the fauna of the Trias, so poor and realy abominable everywhere, is growing every year richer in the Alps, and this striking difference at a distance of not more than 150 miles (f.i. between Würtemberg and the Bavarian Alps) is really astonishing if we consider that the Alps were not raised at the time. Till yet I could not find even attempts to explain this difference, most of the palaeontologist content themselves with the phrase “of the special Alpine facies” but such opinion is little more than á dowright nonsense, seeing that the Alps did not exist at the time, and the whole fauna bears not only what is called a distinct facies, but is quite strikingly distinct.— I have heard that somebody, I think Semper, but am not sure of it, is going to attack your theory of the coral reefs, so is Wagner in his new Travels in America attacking the Selection theory, but as it seems to me on false grounds.⁷

As a laughable instance of the Fruitfulness of Your theory, that gives life to everything it touches, I shall relate to You the following anecdote. Some time ago I wrote to my brother⁸ (he is now Professor of Zoology at Kiev) something about the failure of the Suez canal⁹ and made a joke, that at all events the canal will be in 100 years one of the chief means to test Your theory; some fisches, the larvae of echinoderms, mollusca, the eggs of all sort of animals will certainly be transported by millions from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean adhering to the bottom of the ships, they will come into new conditions, intercross with Meditteranean species an so on,—in 100, nay in 50 years, both seas (having now not more than ten species common) will have hundreds of species in common, new species, perhaps new genera will rise,— this for my joke;— my brother took the matter so earnestly that he insisted on the Counsil of the University for sending immediately a man to explore with the utmost accuracy the fauna of both seas, and especially to determine what species are now common to both,— the man, a certain M^r. Boretzky is already gone.—¹⁰ But the exploration of deep sea fauna is such a difficult and expensive work that certainly one man cannot achieve it, it would be therefore very desirably that England should send a good dredging expedition with the same purpose. There was a Frenchman sent from Paris with the same objects but did nothing good; if they dont make haste one of precious occasion for settling important questions on distribution of faunas will be lost for ever.—¹¹

How is progressing the work on Man,¹² I hope to receive some scheets in April by Your Kindness, my wife¹³ send her salute to M^rs. Darwin and the ladies,—we were separated the whole winter, she working at her mathematics at Heidelberg, and I sticking in the Museum of Munich, in three weeks the vacation begins and we go to Nizza, in the autumn We hope once more to see You in England¹⁴

Yours truly | W. Kowalevsky