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To John Lubbock   3 September [1881?]1

Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.

Sept. 3d

My dear Sir John

The enclosed is worth your reading, & may suggest experiments.2 The case seems to me very perplexing. In my Cross-Fertilisation I have given a few facts about insects finding flowers.— About 40 years ago I tried roughly a few experiments with coarse artificial flowers with honey in middle with no success.3

It wd seem that insects must have very acute vision, thus to detect artificial flowers.— But I remember that Nägeli in his “Enstehung &c” states that he made artificial flowers with paper & scented them & that they were visited.4 Can the artificial colours differ to an insect’s eye from the colours of real flowers?— I daresay you will, if you think it worth while, solve the problem.—5 Do makers of artificial flowers add the “guiding lines” or marks to the nectar?6

⁠⟨⁠13 page excised⁠⟩⁠

Footnotes

1
The year is conjectured on the supposition that works referred to in the letter are H. Müller 1881a and Lubbock 1881b (see nn. 2 and 5, below).
2
The enclosure was probably CD’s copy of Herman Müller’s Alpenblumen (H. Müller 1881a), in which Müller discussed colours and the type of insects they attracted. Müller had sent CD a copy of the book in November 1880 (see Correspondence vol. 28, letter from Hermann Müller, 27 November 1880).
3
In Cross and self fertilisation, pp. 420–3, CD considered the question of how insects recognised flowers; he also discussed the function of colour and odour working together to attract insects to flowers, noting that insects were never deceived by unscented artificial flowers (ibid., pp. 372–4). CD’s own experiment using artificial flowers taken from one of Emma Darwin’s bonnets took place on 1 June 1842, and is mentioned in the notebook he used to record his observations on his children (see Correspondence vol. 4, Appendix III, p. 423).
4
Carl Wilhelm von Nägeli’s experiments with artificial flowers are described in Entstehung und Begriff der naturhistorischen Art (Nägeli 1865, p. 22). CD referred to Nägeli’s experiments in Cross and self fertilisation, p. 374, where he mistakenly referred to page 23 of Nägeli 1865.
5
Lubbock was completing part 9 of a series of articles, ‘Observations on ants, bees, and wasps’; in this article he described experiments showing that bees could distinguish between artificial colours of different hues, and that they showed the same colour preferences in both artificial and natural colours (Lubbock 1881b). Lubbock referred to Müller’s Alpenblumen (see n. 2, above) on pp. 113–15.
6
CD discussed the function of dark-coloured streaks and veins on petals in guiding insects to the nectary in Cross and self fertilisation, pp. 372–4.

Bibliography

Cross and self fertilisation: The effects of cross and self fertilisation in the vegetable kingdom. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1876.

Lubbock, John. 1881b. Observations on ants, bees, and wasps.— Part IX. [Read 17 November 1881.] Journal of the Linnean Society of London (Zoology) 16 (1883): 110–21.

Müller, Hermann. 1881a. Alpenblumen, ihre Befruchtung durch Insekten: und ihre Anpassungen an dieselben. Leipzig: W. Engelmann.

Nägeli, Carl Wilhelm von. 1865. Entstehung und Begriff der naturhistorischen Art. 2d edition. Munich: Verlag der königl. Akademie.

Summary

Discusses insect attraction to artificial flowers. CD’s experiments of 40 years ago failed, but Nägeli reported success by scenting them.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-9622
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
John Lubbock, 4th baronet and 1st Baron Avebury
Sent from
Down
Source of text
The British Library (Add MS 49644: 94–5)
Physical description
AL 3pp inc

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 9622,” accessed on 16 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-9622.xml

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