Dear and Honoured Sir

I intended to send you this autumn an off-spring of the graft-hybrid of the potatoes, that you have mentioned so kindly in your admirable work on domestication, but I am very sorry that I cannot do it.¹ The two bushes that were going on very well when I wrote to you last in July made an immense quantity of very large shoots in the next months, but when I looked for the potatoes they might have produced I found only a very few and these were not larger than hazle-nuts and quite unripe.² I fear that it will be very difficult to get such a graft-hybrid again, all the experiments I made this year in that direction had no result.

Experimentizing with bumpkins to ⁠⟨⁠ascer⁠⟩⁠tain the direct influence of the pollen ⁠⟨⁠on t⁠⟩⁠he fruit I found that the pollen ⁠⟨⁠ta⁠⟩⁠ken from several different forms did not act on the fruit’s form or colour in any way, but I made out that the seeds of one and the same bumpkin produced plants, the fruits of which had three or four different forms and their colour and largeness were very different too.³ This shows that in the fertilization that produced the mother fruit, some of the different sortes of pollen had such a preponderance over the others that it annihilated their action on the ovule.

The botanical garden of Freiburg is in a great disorder, but I hope that I shall have now a better opportunity to go on with my experiments next year.⁴ When you have anything that you would like to have ascertained by another botanist, I should be very glad to be made aware of it.

I embrace this opportunity to ask from you a favour: Professor Weismann, whose speech on your “Origin of species” you will have got, intends to go on with his experiments on butterflies and wishes very much to know something more about the observations of Mr A. R. Wallace and D^r Wallace; you only hint at them in the second volume of your “domestication”. Now perhaps you would be so kind to let me know occasionally the adress of the two gentlemen, that Professor Weismann might write to them in behalf of their papers on polymorphic butterflies and the Sterility of Sphingsidae etc.—⁵ Your usuall kindness will excuse my asking you this question.

Hoping that you are in good health | I remain | dear Sir | yours | faithfully | Hildebrand