From M. T. Masters 21 September 1869
Gardeners’ Chronicle | & Agricultural Gazette Office, | 41, Wellington Street, Strand, W.C.
Septr. 21 1869
My dear Sir/
Many thanks for your note and the accompanying pamphlets.1
At the Hort. Soc. meeting to day Mr Fenn (Rectory Woodstock) showed some Potatos which would I think have interested you had you seen them viz. 1. results of grafting potatos—all failures except one which may be all right ‘Milky white’ grafted into a fluke— result an inferior potato having the characters of both parents2
2d. A large series of tubers the result of a single cross between a round red potato & a white round. The offspring are of all sorts sizes shapes colors degrees of hardihood etc—but what is most curious is that he has got among them a small round mottled tuber which is almost precisely identical with some so called wild tubers grown in Peru—a nice case of reversion!—3 The half bloods exhibit traces of the blood of both parents in very varying degrees— I asked him to forward you samples— He assures me he took great pains to prevent crop fertilisation with other sorts but as I understand the experiments were conducted en pleine terre foreign pollen may have been introduced without his knowledge In any case the reversion fact remains
Believe me | faithfully yrs | Maxwell. T. Masters
Footnotes
Bibliography
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
Desmond, Ray. 1994. Dictionary of British and Irish botanists and horticulturists including plant collectors, flower painters and garden designers. New edition, revised with the assistance of Christine Ellwood. London: Taylor & Francis and the Natural History Museum. Bristol, Pa.: Taylor & Francis.
‘Fertilization of orchids’: Notes on the fertilization of orchids. By Charles Darwin. Annals and Magazine of Natural History 4th ser. 4 (1869): 141–59. [Collected papers 2: 138–56.]
Variation: The variation of animals and plants under domestication. By Charles Darwin. 2 vols. London: John Murray. 1868.
Summary
Robert Fenn exhibited potatoes at the Horticultural Society which showed general failure of graft-hybrids and provided an example of reversion to a wild Peruvian tuber resulting from cross-fertilisation.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-6902
- From
- Maxwell Tylden Masters
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Gardeners’ Chronicle
- Source of text
- DAR 171: 81
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 6902,” accessed on 25 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-6902.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 17