My dear Backy

You have got hold of wrong theory about the brush on the pistil: it serves to brush the shed pollen out of the keel, & not to brush the bees.—¹ The position of brush is correlated with the form of the keel, & whether the loose pollen is collected on proximate or distil end of the pistil. I find in Flora of Isle of Wight that it must have been L. sylvestris which William & I there observed.—² I wish I knew where my note was about the manner in which Bees visited the flowers, & whether our remembrance is right about the pistil sometimes curving to the right side of flower.—³ The Garden var. grows in William’s garden; & in all the flowers the pistil curves (as in your flowers sent here) to the left. (In one of your flowers the young pod was bursting out to the left of single stamen.) I have been looking at these flowers, and in all the pistil curves to left, & bees have not bitten holes in any.⁴ The right side of keel is more open for biting than the left side: do the biting Bees bite through the staminal tube?? Or do they (after biting through the keel, insert their probosces) through the 2 nectar holes?? It w^d. perhaps be worth while to cover up in net (not touching the flowers) a fine raceme of young flowers & to see if they would set pods without aid of Bees: I fancy that they would, though thank Heavens the seedlings would not be so fine as from crossed flowers. We return on Thursday by a train which starts at 7 A.M.⁵ The children declare that they will go to bed as soon as they get to Down. We have had a very nice visit here, & dear old William is as sweet & charming as ever, but rather languid & can never read to himself. He & Jemmy⁶ do a good deal of larking together.— I am in an idiotic state of idleness & long to awake again into life.

Your affect. Father | & idiot | C. Darwin

My affectionate remembrances to Amy & M^rs Ruck.—⁷