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Darwin Correspondence Project

From Hermann Müller   27 November 1880

Lippstadt

27/11 1880.

My dear Sir!

My heartiest thanks for your work “on the power of movement in plants” which you have kindly sent to me.1 I have only read hitherto the introduction and Chap. XII and I. But this is sufficient to show the generality of the circumnutating movement in the development of plants and its paramount bearing on the origin of nearly all sorts of movements in plants, which hitherto separatedly and without connection have been studied and described.

It is with the greatest admiration that I have learned the astonishingly simple fundamental idea of your researches, your sagacious methods of experimenting and of pursuing this idea in all its consequences, the overpowering army of your careful and accurate special observations, by which any doubt about the universality of the cirumnutating movement in the vegetable Kingdom is dispersed. It is, therefore, with high enjoyment, that I will read the rest of your new admirable work, which again has opened a new and most fruitful dominion of botanical research.

Please to accept with indulgence my work on alpine flowers which in this days has been edited and which I have sent to you yesterday.2

My son resides in London since several weeks, but he is not yet acclimated there. In the next days he intends to make use of your kind offer to make your personal acquaintance3

With sincere admiration | yours | very faithfully | H. Müller.

Footnotes

Müller’s name is on CD’s presentation list for Movement in plants (see Appendix IV).
Müller had sent his Alpenblumen, ihre Befruchtung durch Insekten: und ihre Anpassungen an dieselben (Alpine flowers, their fertilisation through insect agency and adaptations for this; H. Müller 1881).
No record of CD’s meeting Müller’s son, Wilhelm Hermann Müller, has been found.

Bibliography

Movement in plants: The power of movement in plants. By Charles Darwin. Assisted by Francis Darwin. London: John Murray. 1880.

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

Summary

Movement in plants has shown him CD’s research method: 1. Find a fundamental idea of great generality (circumnutation); 2. Pursue it everywhere with observations and experiment; 3. Conduct special observations which undo any doubt of generality.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-12868
From
Heinrich Ludwig Hermann (Hermann) Müller
To
Charles Robert Darwin
Sent from
Lippstadt
Source of text
DAR 171: 317
Physical description
ALS 2pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 12868,” accessed on 29 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-12868.xml

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