From the seething agitation he had aroused Professor Haeckel cheerfully withdrew in the autumn of 1900 to make his long journey to Java. He now lived under the public eye, and amusing constructions were put on his movements. American journalism arrived, by its peculiar methods, at the knowledge that he had gone in quest of bones of the “missing link.” A few bones of a half-human, half-ape form had been discovered on the south coast of Java a few years previously, and the trained American imagination quickly constructed a theory, which as quickly crystallised into fact. Haeckel had been heavily subsidised by an American millionaire to discover more bones of the ape-man of Java. Not to be outdone, other journals added a rival subsidy (from the American Government) and a rival search. The sober truth was that Haeckel had used his Bressa prize fund, with a subsidy from the Ritter fund at Jena, to make a study of botany and marine life in the tropics. He was within a hundred miles of the spot where Dubois had found his interesting relics, but made no effort to go further. For him the evolution of man rested on too massive a foundation for a few bones to increase its solidity. Once more he brought home huge cases of preparations, a large number of sketches (some of them touched up by Verestchagin, who was returning on the boat from China), and material for the inevitable book. _Aus Insulinde_ is a charming and finely illustrated work of travel, but has not been translated. Before he left Jena he had, with his characteristic urbanity and diligence, given personal replies to about a thousand letters he had received apropos of his _Riddle of the Universe_. The epistolary flood rose higher than ever on his return. The struggle had spread to England and France. He had returned to a cauldron of controversy. He quietly resumed his teaching at the university and attacked his still formidable literary programme. Day after day the aged scholar—he was now in his sixty-seventh year—briskly stepped up to the podium at the Zoological Institute and delivered his lectures, drawing his objects with a few quick strokes on the board or exhibiting the plates prepared by Giltsch. He noted with a quiet gleam of satisfaction that a few ladies now ventured into the “Materialist” circle. The new century had begun. In 1902 he issued the cheap edition of the _Riddle_, of which 180,000 copies have been sold in Germany, with a reply to its critics. “The great struggle for truth,” he wrote to his friend, Dr. Breitenbach, “grows fiercer and fiercer, the more my work is attacked by the clergy, the metaphysical schoolmen, and the erudite Philistines. I am continually receiving lively and sometimes enthusiastic letters of congratulation from all parts of the world.” In the meantime he was engaged upon two important works, which he published in 1903.