Letter
to
Summary
Thanks MJB for information which he is including in his article for the Linnean Society.
Refers to the peas “which produce the black or intensely purple pods”. [See 1834 and 1836.]
Transcription
Down Bromley Kent
March 18th
My dear Sir
I am very much obliged for your note of the 7th & kind permission to incorporate your facts: I have now sent a little notice to the Linnean Soc.—f2
Many thanks, also, for your remarks on the Peas.— I send a few of the Peas, which produce the black or intensely purple pods.—f3
Pray believe me | Yours truly obliged | Ch. Darwin
Footnotes
- f1
- The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from M. J. Berkeley, 7 March 1856 (see Correspondence vol. 6).
- f2
- Berkeley had experimented on the immersion in sea-water of seeds of different kinds of plants to determine how long they could remain immersed and still germinate. See Correspondence vol. 6, letter to M. J. Berkeley, 29 February [1856] and n. 3, and letter from M. J. Berkeley, 7 March 1856. The notice CD refers to is `On the action of sea-water on the germination of seeds’ (read 6 May 1856; Journal of the Linnean Society (Botany) 1 (1857): 130–40, Collected papers 1: 264–73). CD referred to Berkeley several times in his account of their joint experiments; see also Origin, pp. 358–60. CD’s notes for and manuscript of this paper are in DAR 27.1 E and F. See also Correspondence vol. 5, letter to Gardeners’ Chronicle, 21 November [1855].
- f3
- In his letter to Berkeley of 29 February [1856] (Correspondence vol. 6), CD mentioned a neighbour’s `curious pea with black pods’; Berkeley had suggested the difference might be due to `mere variation and not to impregnation’, and asked for a sample (letter from M. J. Berkeley, 7 March 1856).