My dear Darwin

Your note which reached me last night crossed mine¹   I am writing to M^r Currie who as our Botanical Secretary edits the botanical part of the journal to know when your paper could appear in the Journal as we are anxious to meet the views of authors as to which of the publications they wish their papers to appear in.² The Council meets on Thursday in next week when the publication of yours and other papers will be decided on. The part now printing is far advanced and I almost fear there will not be room for yours till the next but we will see what can be done³

Your paper on hearing it read threw quite a new light on the kind of semidioicality which had been so much observed of late and which in the course of our examinations for Genera Plantarum⁴ had become quite so common a thing that precise instances no longer attract much attention and I only mentioned a few that occurred on the spur of the moment   The Labiatæ I particularly alluded to were many forms of Mentha arvensis and Thymus serpyllum and other common species of those genera which in local Floras have been distinguished as species on the character staminibus exsertis and staminibus inclusis— Kunth and others divided the ægiphilos of tropical America into two sections on that character and we now find that each species in one section has its correspondent in the other.⁵ Planchon observed that long styles & short stamens & short styles with long stamens in several Linums, and abandoned that character which had been previously made use of when he monographised the genus in Hooker’s London Journal of Botany⁶—but I forget whether he remarks on the question in print although I remember conversing with him on it. So in Oxalis Jacquin distinguished some Cape species then in cultivation on that character and I think Zuccarini remarks upon its being not specific in his Monograph of Oxalis but I will look as to what are the species when I am at Kew this morning & write again—⁷ In Rubiaceæ I have observed the exserted and included stamens in many species but as I say it is so common that I forget exactly which are the species— the most common in European plants that occur to me are in Mentha & Thymus as above.

I should be very anxious you would look at the case of Viola for its fertilisation is always a puzzle to me   In V. canina, V. odorata, V. palustris and all of that section (but not V. tricolor V. arvensis etc) I can never find any of the perfect flowers that appear in winter and spring set their seed although both stamens and ovaries appear perfect. After these are all gone by a number of minute apetalous flowers in which we very seldom find any more than rudimentary stamens, go on for months setting seed in the greatest abundance— How do they get impregnated by insects when there are no flowers about for insects to get the pollen from? In most orders where this kind of dimorphism have been observed the two sets of flowers are contemporaneous— In Ononis minutissima however the apetalous and apparently stamen-less but fertile flowers appear in spring whilst the perfect (also fertile ones) come out in summer.⁸ In Viola the two may be contemporaneous for a few days when one is going out and the other coming in but the majority appear at a great interval

Yours very sincerely | George Bentham