skip to content
Home

Darwin Correspondence Project

To Otto Busch   26 June 1877

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

June 26th 1877

Dear Sir

I am much obliged to you for your very kind note & present of your work on Schopenhauer.1 I will endeavour to read it but fear it may be too difficult as I am but a poor German scholar.

Many thanks for your remarks on bees and clover. When I spoke of the red clover producing few seeds last spring, I stated that I supposed that it was due to the extreme rarity of Humble-bees (Bombus), for I have ascertained that this plant requires insects for its fertilisation, & I knew that Hive-bees do not visit the flowers, except sometimes for a secretion on the outside of the calyx, or for sucking the nectar from the outside through holes previously bitten by Humble-bees.2

With much respect & my thanks, I remain | Dear Sir | yours faithfully | Charles Darwin

Footnotes

1
The notes from Busch have not been found. CD’s copy of Arthur Schopenhauer: Beitrag zu einer Dogmatik der Religionslosen (Arthur Schopenhauer: Contribution to a dogma of the religionless; Busch 1877) is in the Darwin Library–Down (Marginalia 1: 104).
2
Busch evidently responded to CD’s letter to Gardeners’ Chronicle, 3 January [1877]. For CD’s observations of humble-bees boring holes in flowers, see Correspondence vol. 2, letter to Gardeners’ Chronicle, [16 August 1841]; on subsequent visits by hive-bees to the same flowers, see Correspondence vol. 6, letter to Gardeners’ Chronicle, 18 October [1857]. See also Origin 6th ed., p. 75.

Bibliography

Busch, Otto. 1877. Arthur Schopenhauer: Beitrag zu einer Dogmatik der Religionslosen. Heidelberg: F. Bassermann.

Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.

Marginalia: Charles Darwin’s marginalia. Edited by Mario A. Di Gregorio with the assistance of Nicholas W. Gill. Vol. 1. New York and London: Garland Publishing. 1990.

Origin 6th ed.: The origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. 6th edition, with additions and corrections. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1872.

Summary

Thanks OB for his work on Schopenhauer [Arthur Schopenhauer. Beitrag zu einer Dogmatik der Religionslosen (1877)]

and for his remarks on bees and clover. When CD spoke, last spring, of the few seeds produced by red clover, he supposed it was due to rarity of humble-bees.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-11019
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
Otto Georg Moritz (Otto) Busch
Sent from
Down
Source of text
Ernst Mayr Library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University (bMs 7)
Physical description
ALS 3pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 11019,” accessed on 23 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-11019.xml

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