To Hermann Müller 1 January [1878]1
Down,
Jan. 1.
My dear Sir
I must write two or three lines to thank you cordially for your very handsome and very interesting Review of my last book in Kosmos, which I have this minute finished.2 It is wonderful how you have picked out everything important in it. I am especially glad that you have called attention to the parallelism between illegitimate offspring of heterostyled plants and hybrids. Your previous article in Kosmos seemed to me very important, but for some unknown reason the German was very difficult, and I was sadly over-worked at the time, so that I could not understand a good deal of it.3 But I have put it on one side and when I have to prepare a new Edit. of my book, I must make it out.—4 It seems that you attribute such cases as that of diœcious Rhamnus and your own of Valeriana to the existence of two forms with larger and smaller flowers.5 I cannot follow the steps by which such plants have been rendered diœcious, but when I read your article with more care I hope I shall understand. If you have succeeded in explaining this class of cases I shall heartily rejoice, for they utterly perplexed me and I could not conjecture what their meaning was. It is a grievous evil to have no faculty for new languages.
With the most sincere respect and hearty good wishes to you and all your family for the new year, believe me, | Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin
What interesting papers your wonderful brother6 has lately been writing.
Footnotes
Bibliography
Forms of flowers 2d ed.: The different forms of flowers on plants of the same species. 2d edition. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1880.
Forms of flowers: The different forms of flowers on plants of the same species. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1877.
Müller, Hermann. 1873. Die Befruchtung der Blumen durch Insekten und die gegenseitigen Anpassungen beider. Ein Beitrag zur Erkenntniss des ursächlichen Zusammenhanges in der organischen Natur. Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann.
Summary
Thanks HM for his review [of Forms of flowers, Kosmos 2 (1877–8): 286].
Thinks HM’s previous article was very important [Kosmos 2 (1877–8): 128–40]. CD will "heartily rejoice" if HM has explained the steps by which Rhamnus and Valeriana have been rendered dioecious.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-11307
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- Heinrich Ludwig Hermann (Hermann) Müller
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- DAR 146: 438
- Physical description
- C 2pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 11307,” accessed on 1 September 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-11307.xml