Dear Sir

I hope that you will excuse the liberty which as a stranger I take in begging a favour of you. I have read with unusual interest your very interesting paper in the American Naturalist on the structure of the flowers of Solanum rostratum, & I sh^d. be grateful if you would send me some seeds in a small box (telling me whether the plant is an annual, so that I may know where to sow the seeds), in order that I may have the pleasure of seeing the flowers & experimentising on them.¹ But if you intend to experimentise on them, of course you will not send me the seeds, as I sh^d. be very unwilling to interfere in any way with your work. I sh^d. also rather like to look at the flowers of Cassia chamæcrista.²

Many years ago I tried some experiments in a remotely analogous case & this year am trying others. I described what I was doing to D^r. Fritz Müller (Blumenau, St^a. Catharina, Brazil) & he has told me that he believes that in certain plants producing 2 sets of anthers of a different colour, that bees collect the pollen from one of the sets alone.³ He w^d. therefore be much interested by your paper, if you have a spare copy that you could send him. I think, but my memory now often fails me, that he has published on the subject in Kosmos.⁴

Hoping that you will excuse me, I remain, Dear Sir | Yours faithfully | Ch. Darwin

P.S. In my little book on the Fertilisation of Orchids, you will find under Mormodes ignea, an account of a flower, laterally asymmetrical, & which I think that I called right-handed or left-handed flowers.—⁵