From William Ogle [after 5 May 1873]1
Oxford & Cambridge Club. | Pall Mall. S.W.
Dear Mr. Darwin
Many thanks for your kindness in letting me know of Mullers book on Fertilisation.2 I will at once procure it. I fear however that the flowers of Italy and Switzerland will not hereafter come much in my way. I have been nominated Officer of Health in North Hertfordshire, and the duties of this post put an end to all pleasant trips in the mountains.3
There is a passage in Aristotle’s Historia Animalium (viii. 13) which I think may be of interest to your son, in relation to the subject on which he wrote last week in Nature. Aristotle states that tunnies swim round the Black Sea from right to left, that is always keep the land on their right; and he says that some have supposed that this was explained by the right eye having more acute sight.4 Perhaps those familiar with Hare hunting might know whether a hare circles preferentially towards the left or not.5
Believe me | Yrs. very sincerely | William Ogle.
Footnotes
Bibliography
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.
Szreter, Simon. 1996. Fertility, class and gender in Britain, 1860–1940. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Summary
Thanks for reference to Hermann Müller’s book on fertilisation [Befruchtung der Blumen (1873)].
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-8705
- From
- William Ogle
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Oxford and Cambridge Club
- Source of text
- DAR 173: 7
- Physical description
- ALS 3pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 8705,” accessed on 20 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-8705.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 21