Summary

"I have seen the action on Ophrys exactly as you describe and am thoroughly ashamed of my inaccuracy."

Summary

Comments on THF’s MS [on fertilisation of scarlet runners]. Suggests publication, though CD anticipated main features ten years before. Is amused at the caution with which THF put his case that the final end [of the contrivances] was crossing distinct individuals.

Summary

Will send THF’s paper [on scarlet runners] to Annals and Magazine of Natural History with a note recommending publication [see 6384].

Suggests books on Lobelia.

Summary

Informs THF that Annals and Magazine of Natural History will publish his paper [see 6384].

Summary

Suggests THF write a paper on violets. Asa Gray, once a sceptic, now declares he is convinced whole structure of a flower is adapted for a cross with another individual.

Urges THF not to give up Pangenesis lightly. "It has thrown light on my mind in regard [to] a great series of complex phenomena."

Summary

Advises THF that best plan is to investigate the part certain structures play with all plants or orders, instead of describing means of fertilisation in particular plants. Naturalists value observations far more than reasoning.

Summary

Dislikes the use of the term "degradation" as applied to the closed flowers of Viola species. Species with such self-fertilising flowers also have flowers adapted for crossing. The development of closed flowers adapted to ensure a sufficient stock of seed is progressive.

Summary

THF’s view, if confirmed, pleases CD in that what appears a mere morphological character is found to be of use. Carl Nägeli has been attacking him on this head.

Summary

Sympathises with THF at being forestalled by Delpino, but urges him to publish confirmation.

Summary

Comments on notes made by THF on Passiflora and Tacsonia. Suggests he examine more species. Recalls his own observations on P. princeps and Tacsonia.

Summary

Encloses extract from a letter from Fritz Müller about humming-birds visiting Passiflora, "as a caution about Passiflora in contrast with Tacsonia".

[Signed with CD’s name by Emma Darwin.]

Summary

Encloses part of letter from Fritz Müller on Passiflora, with seeds.

Is endeavouring to have included in next census a question as to whether the parents in each household are cousins.

Summary

Fertilisation of barberries.

Passiflora.

Is continuing his experiments on the comparative growth of crossed and self-fertilised plants.

Summary

Encloses seeds from Fritz Müller, of a species of Passiflora, fertilised by a humble-bee.

Summary

Was aware of Maine’s view but never thought of its extension to morals. Cannot avoid thinking that personal property like flint tools must have "strictly belonged to individuals as much as a bone to a dog".

Summary

Confesses to intense hatred of the bee [orchid] for its anomalous perpetual self-fertilisation.

Summary

THF’s article in Nature ["The fertilisation of a few papilionaceous flowers", 6 (1872): 478–80, 498–501] is extremely good.

Suspects he now has answer to why common peas and sweetpeas hardly ever intercross, a point which half drove CD mad for years.

Summary

Recommends Hermann Müller’s Die Befruchtung der Blumen [1873].

Summary

Asks THF to examine old flowers of Coronilla for holes bored by bees.

Is investigating whether drops of water injure leaves.

Summary

Suggests a reference to Annals and Magazine of Natural History, 1 Dec 1873, p. 497, when THF takes up Coronilla.