skip to content
Home

Darwin Correspondence Project

From M. T. Masters   30 April 1869

Gardeners’ Chronicle | & Agricultural Gazette Office, | 41, Wellington Street, Strand, W.C.

April 30 1869

My dear Sir,

On the chance that you may not have seen it I forward to you by book post a paper on the “Origin of Genera”—1 If it is of the slightest interest to you, please retain it, but if you have it already return it to me at any time— No doubt you saw Decaisne’s letter on the apple last week. He surely cannot mean that there are no intermediates between Malus & Pirus2

The other day at Chiswick Dr Hogg, Mr Moore Mr Barron the Superintendent3 & myself were looking at a tree in full blossom & none of us could tell for certain whether it was an apple or a pear— To be sure we had not the fruit before us—

faithfully yrs. | Maxwell. T. Masters

C. Darwin Esq

Footnotes

1
Masters refers to Cope 1868. There is an annotated offprint of this paper in the Darwin Pamphlet Collection–CUL.
2
Joseph Decaisne wrote a reply to an enquiry that the editors of the Gardeners’ Chronicle had sent to him about the ‘Paradise apple’; it was published in Gardeners’ Chronicle, 24 April 1869, p. 443. Malus is the genus of apples; Pyrus that of pears. Decaisne had written: ‘I have accumulated materials which do not permit me to adopt the theory of the transformation of one species into another, though I admit that species are very variable. The “Malus” remain Apples, as the “Pirus” remain Pears, in spite of the diversity of their forms and the infinite number of their varieties.’ The paradise apple was Malus pumila var. paradisiaca or Pyrus dasyphylla; both names are synonyms of Malus ×dasyphylla.
3
Robert Hogg, Thomas Moore, and Archibald F. Barron, superintendent of the Royal Horticultural Society’s gardens at South Kensington and Chiswick.

Bibliography

Cope, Edward Drinker. 1868. On the origin of genera. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia (1868): 242–300.

Summary

Sends paper on the "Origin of genera".

J. Decaisne, in last week’s Gardeners’ Chronicle, on the apple, cannot mean there are no intermediates between Malus and Pyrus.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-6721
From
Maxwell Tylden Masters
To
Charles Robert Darwin
Sent from
Gardeners’ Chronicle
Source of text
DAR 171: 80
Physical description
ALS 2pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 6721,” accessed on 19 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-6721.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 17

letter

Darwin Correspondence Project
darwin@lib.cam.ac.uk

© University of Cambridge 2022

Copyright declaration

Privacy policy

Website by Surface Impression

 

Study at Cambridge

About the University

Research at Cambridge