1888.06.18 English

     Malling Hansen

THE ROYAL INSTITUTE

  FOR THE DEAF-MUTE    

      COPENHAGEN  

   18th of June 1888

 

 

 

            Dear Professor Steenstrup   !

 

           

 

My sincere and heartfelt thank you for the book[1] you sent me. It has been pure joy for me to read it – it is clear, lucid and convincing. You work fills me with the kind of satisfaction we experience when sunshine spreads out along areas that have hitherto been shrouded in fog.Kindest regards from my dear wife and from yours faithfully                                     

 

                           R. Malling-Hansen

 

 

[1] CB: Japetus Steenstrup, 1813-1897, a Danish naturalist covering Zoology, Biology, Geology as well as making important contributions to Archeology. He produced a prodigious amount of scientific works and was very highly respected nationally and internationally; did research in a wide spectrum the natural sciences, including e.g. giant squids and mammoths. In 1888 his perhaps most important contribution to science was re-published: “The Contribution of Peat Bogs to our Knowledge about the Wildlife and Nature of Prehistoric Denmark. A lecture given to members of the Danish Association of Farmers at the Castle Christiansborg  on July 10, 1869. His discoveries within this field were of enormous importance to Archeology, among other sciences. Quite possibly this is the publication RMH received. Japetus Steenstrup corresponded close with, among others, Charles Darwin, but he remained unconvinced that the theory of evolution was correct.  Steenstrup was also a close friend of the Malling-Hansen family and he was an uncle of RMH’s second wife.