My dear Sir

I thank you very sincerely for your two kind notes. The next time you write to your Father I beg you to give him from me my best thanks, but I am sorry that he should have had the trouble of writing when ill. I have been much interested by the facts given by him.² If you think he would in the least care to hear the result of an artificial cross of two Sweet Peas; you can send the enclosed;³ if it will only trouble him, tear it up. There seems to me so much parallelism in the kind of variation from my experiment which was certainly a cross and what M^r. Masters has observed, that I cannot help suspecting that his Peas were crossed by Bees, which I have seen well dusted with the pollen of the Sweet Pea; but then I wish this, and how hard it is to prevent one’s wish biassing one’s judgment!

I was struck with your remark about the Compositæ &c.—⁴ I do not see that it bears much against me, and whether it does or not is of course of not the slightest importance. Although I fully agree that no definition can be drawn between monstrosities and slight variations (such as my theory requires) yet I suspect there is some distinction. Some facts lead me to think that monstrosities supervene generally at an early age; and after attending to the subject I have great doubts whether species in a state of nature ever become modified by such sudden jumps, as would result from the natural selection of monstrosities. You cannot do me a greater service than by pointing out errors. I sincerely hope that your work on monstrosities will soon appear, for I am sure it will be highly instructive.—⁵

Now for your notes, for which let me again thank you.—⁶

(1) Your conclusion about parts developed &c. &c: not being extra variable agrees with Hooker’s: You will see that I have stated that the rule apparently does not hold with plants, though it ought, if true, to hold good with them.⁷

(2) I cannot now remember in what work I saw the statement about Peloria affecting the axis;⁸ but I know it was one which I thought might be trusted. I consulted also D^r. Falconer⁹ and I think that he agreed to the truth of it; but I cannot now tell where to look for my notes.— I had been much struck with finding a Laburnum tree with the terminal flowers alone in each raceme peloric though not perfectly regular.¹⁰ The Pelargonium case in the “Origin” seems to point in the same direction.¹¹

(3) Thanks for the correction about furze; I found the seedlings just sprouting, and was so much surprised at their appearance that I sent them to Hooker; but I never plainly asked myself whether they were cotyledons or first leaves.¹²

(4) That is a curious fact about the seeds of the furze,—the more curious as I found with some Leguminosæ that immersion in plain cold water for a very few days killed some kinds.—¹³

If at any time anything should occur to you illustrating or opposing my notions, and you have leisure to inform me, I should be truly grateful, for I can plainly see that you have wealth of knowledge.

My dear Sir | Yours truly obliged | C. Darwin

With respect to advancement or retrogression in organisation in monstrosities of the Compositæ &c. do you not find it very difficult to define which is which.

Anyhow most Botanists seem to differ as widely as possible on this head.