My dear M^r Darwin

Many thanks for the trouble you took in writing to me and sending the pamphlets which I shall return in a few days.¹ Hildebrand’s methodical summary of his observations on Dichogamy is very useful.² As soon as numerous detached facts have been recorded on any particular subject it becomes most essential to have them brought together for those who want to make use of them. Delpinos dichogamic observations are also a collection of all the cases he has met with but have you read his Pensieri (or had it read for you as I observe you say do not read Italian)³ Chiefly verbiage and no facts—all speculation. A great admirer of yours—of your views of affinity depending on descent—firmly believing that all plants phoenogamic and cryptogamic are all descended from one type—agreeing with you in all but in your great and ruling principle of natural selection which he utterly rejects—misrepresents you in supposing you to attribute variation to chance—and substitutes for natural selection—a plasmatory principle endowed with intelligence which he attributes to plants—and believes that under the guidance of this principle every plant modifies the form colour scent etc of its own flowers in order to attract the particular insect it requires to fertilise it—and as the degree of intelligence is so different in different animals (contrasting for instance the cleverness and intelligence of hymenoptera with the stupidity of Sarcophaga carnaria in being so grossly deceived by the putrid-meat look and smell of Stopelea flower)⁴—so in plants the degree of intelligence displayed in moulding their flowers is very various.

My object in writing to you now is however to beg a favor of you. Could you lend me for a few days Sprengel’s Entdeckte Geheimniss der Natur which I cannot find anywhere— It is neither at the Royal nor at the Linnean Society nor yet at Kew.⁵ Also can you tell me what is Häckel’s “Generelle Morphologie der Organismen” which is said to be a remarkable working out of your views.⁶

Amongst dichogamists I meet with no explanation of such cases as those of Viola odorata canina and all that set (not the V. tricolor set)⁷ in which the showy spring flowers are generally (indeed I believe in some species universally) sterile and the very inconspicuous petalless and summer flowers alone bear seeds   Hildebrand alludes indeed to the mode of fecundation of the petalless flowers of Oxalis acetosella and Viola odorata—but what is the part in the economy of the plant acted by the numerous showy flowers which appear at a different season?⁸

Ever yours sincerely | George Bentham