{London,] 18 June 1875 
My dear Friend, 

When I visited you the day before yesterday I forgot to tell you 
an important piece of news of which you may not yet be aware. 
Traube, a Berlin physiologist, has succeeded in making artificial 
cells.°’ Needless to say, they are not completely natural cells, being 
without a nucleus. 

If a colloidal solution, e.g. of gelatine, is combined with copper 
sulphate, etc., this produces globules surrounded by a membrane 
that can be made to grow by intussusception. Here, then, 
membrane formation and cell growth have left the realm of 
hypothesis! It marks a great step forward, the more so since 
Helmholtz and others were engaged in disseminating the absurd 
doctrine that the germs of terrestrial life fall ready-made from the 
moon, i.e. that they were brought down here by aerolites.* I detest 
the kind of explanation which solves a problem by consigning it to 
some other locality. 

The trade crisis goes on. Everything now depends on the news 
that will arrive from the Asiatic markets which, for years, have 
been getting increasingly overstocked—especially those in East 
Indies. Under certain conditions, which are, however, not likely to 
materialise, the final crash may yet be delayed until the autumn. 

One truly remarkable phenomenon is the decrease in the 
number of years between general crises. I have always regarded 
that number not as a constant, but as a decreasing magnitude; 
what is pleasing, however, is that the signs of its decrease are so 
palpable as to augur ill for the survival of the bourgeois world.” 

My compliments to Mrs and Mr Noel.” 

Yours ever, 

K. M.