To Gerard Krefft [September 1873]1
My dear Sir
I have been ill & must be very brief.—2 Your letter amused me & my family greatly, & I read with much interest your letters to the newspaper.3
Many thanks for the fact about the globular worm-castings; but no bottle has yet reached me.4 I wish you heartily all success. Your letter is so fresh & spirited, you ought to write a book, tinctured with Nat. Hist., about the Colony.5
Yours sincerely | Ch. Darwin
I send on next page my autograph6
P.S. Do you know any Botanist who observes living plants. I much want to know whether the species of Eucalyptus are “dichogamous,” i.e. whether in the same flower the male & female organs are mature at the same time or day.— If Bees visit flowers after the pollen is quite or almost quite shed, this wd. almost show that the flowers are dichogamo⟨us⟩— I am tired & cannot write.—
C.D.
Footnotes
Bibliography
Krefft, Gerard. 1873. Savages, fossil and recent. Sydney Mail, 19 July 1873, p. 74; 26 July 1873, p. 106; 2 August 1873, p. 142; 16 August 1873, p. 210.
Summary
Thanks for observations on worm-castings and for JLGK’s amusing letter.
Wants to know whether species of Eucalyptus are dichogamous. [The P.S. on Eucalyptus may be part of another letter to another correspondent.]
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-9037
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- Johann Louis Gerard (Gerard) Krefft
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- Mitchell Library, Sydney (MLMSS 5828); Smithsonian Libraries (Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology MSS 405 A Gift of the Burndy Library)
- Physical description
- ALS 2pp inc
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 9037,” accessed on 19 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-9037.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 21