To Francis Darwin [September 1875 or later?]1
My dear F.
Here is a horrid job which I beg you to do pretty soon, i.e. to make out Hoffmann’s conclusions about the fertilisation of Phaseolus. p. 47 to 80.—2 He gives a resumè which will perhaps tell enough.— Phaseolus multiflorus or the Scarlet Runner is plant on which I experimented, & my results (i.e. that it cannot be fertile without insects) has been since confirmed by Ogle & Belt.—3 I am aware that Ph. vulgaris is fully self-fertile.4 If Hoffmann finds that Ph. multiflorus—(which by the way is synonymous with Ph. coccineus of Lamarck) is fertile in Germany when insects are excluded, either climate has affected the plant, which I do not believe or two species are confounded under one name.—5
C. Darwin
Does Hoffman describe at all Ph. multiflorus, as whether it is a tall twining plant with scarlet flowers??6
Footnotes
Bibliography
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
Cross and self fertilisation: The effects of cross and self fertilisation in the vegetable kingdom. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1876.
Hoffmann, Hermann. 1869. Untersuchungen zur Bestimmung des Werthes von Species und Varietät. Ein Beitrag zur Kritik der Darwin’schen Hypothese. Giessen: J. Ricker’sche Buchhandlung.
Summary
Asks FD to make out [Hermann] Hoffmann’s conclusions about the fertilisation of Phaseolus multiflorus [in Untersuchungen zur Bestimmung des Werthes von Species und Varietät (1869)].
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-9219A
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- Francis Darwin
- Source of text
- CUL, Darwin Pamphlet Collection R112
- Physical description
- ALS 2pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 9219A,” accessed on 29 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-9219A.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 23