My dear Sir

I have received the seeds & your most interesting letter of Feb. 7^th.¹ The seeds shall be sown, & I shall like to see the plants sleeping; but I doubt whether I shall make any more detailed observations on this subject, as now that I feel very old, I require the stimulus of some novelty to make me work. This stimulus you have amply given me in your remarkable view of the meaning of the 2-coloured stamens in many flowers.— I was so much struck with this fact with Lythrum, that I began experimenting on some Melastomaceæ, which have two sets of extremely differently coloured anthers. After reading your letter I turned to my notes, (made 20 years ago!) to see whether they w^d. support or contradict your suggestion.² I cannot tell yet, but I have come across one very remarkable result that seedlings from the crimson anthers were not $\frac{1}{20}$^th of the size of seedlings from the yellow anthers of the same flowers.—³ Fewer good seeds were produced by the crimson pollen   I concluded that the shorter stamens were aborting & that the pollen was not good.—

The mature pollen is incoherent & must be flirted against the visiting insect’s body; I remembered this & I found it said in my early notes, that bees w^d never visit the flowers for pollen. This made me afterwards write to the late D^r Cruger in the W. Indies, & he observed for me the flowers, & saw Bees pressing the anthers with their mandibles from the base upwards, & this forced a worm-like thread of pollen from the terminal pore, & this pollen the bees collected with their hind legs.⁴ So that the Melastomas are not opposed to your views.—

I am now working on the habits of worms, & it tires me much to change my subject; so I will lay on one side your letter & my notes, until I have a week’s leisure, & will then see whether my facts bear on your view.⁵ I will then send a letter to Nature or to Linn. Soc^y., with the extract from your letter (& this ought to appear in any case) with my own observations, if they appear worth publishing.⁶ The subject had gone out of my mind, but I now remember thinking that the imperfect action of the crimson stamens might throw light on hybridism. If this pollen is developed according to your view for the sake of attracting insects, it might act imperfectly, as well as if the stamens were becoming rudimentary. I do not know whether I have made myself intelligible.

With ever renewed admiration of your powers of observation & reasoning, I remain | Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin