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To George Bentham   1 May [1868]1

Down. | Bromley. | Kent. S.E.

May 1st.

Dear Bentham

I am particularly obliged to you for telling me a little about Delpino, as it would have broken my wife’s heart to have made out so good an abstract of his notions.2

I will send tomorrow by railway Haeckel’s Morphol: as you can then return all the books together & it will cost you no more trouble.3

I think highly of what little I have read, as does Huxley who has read more. He is dreadful in inventing new terms.4 I also send Sprengel which is a wonderful book, tho’ here and there fanciful. I know R. Brown thought highly of it. It is really curious that he missed the chief key viz. the crossing of distinct individuals.5 Reading the book with this in one’s mind makes many points far clearer than he perceived. I have also remembered & sent a short paper on Martha which is really worth reading.6 With respect to Viola see p. 191 of my Lythrum paper, likewise sent. With respect to the closed flowers I can hardly doubt that they play the same part as detached bulbs.7 Under the unnatural conditions of cultivation Ononis columnæ produces with me only the closed flowers, whilst O. minutissima produces both kinds.8 With some plants, as Lathyrus nissolia, flowers are produced in a state intermediate between perfect & closed flowers.9 When you return all the books & pamphlets (but do not hurry) please direct them exactly as follows

Ch. Darwin Esq.

Bromley Station

Per Rail          Kent

(to be left till called for)

As you seem a little interested at present about the descent theory, I cannot resist telling you that two of the best paleontologs in Europe viz. A. Gaudry & Rutimeyer have declared more or less completely in favour of my views.10

Believe me dear Bentham | yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin

Footnotes

1
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from George Bentham, 30 April 1868.
3
CD refers to Ernst Haeckel’s Generelle Morphologie (Haeckel 1866), which Bentham had enquired about in his letter of 30 April 1868.
4
CD refers to Thomas Henry Huxley. For CD’s and Huxley’s opinions of Haeckel 1866, see also Correspondence vol. 15. CD’s annotated copy of Haeckel 1866 is in the Darwin Library–CUL (see Marginalia 1: 355–7).
5
CD refers to Sprengel 1793, which Bentham had enquired about in his letter of 30 April 1868. An annotated copy of Sprengel 1793 is in the Darwin Library–CUL (Marginalia 1: 774–85). CD first recorded reading Sprengel 1793 in 1841 (see Correspondence vol. 4, Appendix IV), and cited it a number of times in Orchids and Cross and self fertilisation. CD mentioned Robert Brown’s high opinion of Sprengel 1793 in Orchids, p. 340 n. In Cross and self fertilisation, p. 455, CD wrote, ‘Sprengel … only occasionally saw that the object for which so many curious and beautiful adapatations have been acquired, was the cross-fertilisation of distinct plants; and he knew nothing of the benefits which the offspring thus receive in growth, vigour, and fertility.’
6
CD refers to F. Müller 1866. Uncertain whether the plant discussed in this paper was a species of Posoqueria, Fritz Müller named it Martha (posoqueria?) fragrans. The species is now known as Posoqueria latifolia subsp. latifolia. See also Correspondence vol. 14, letters to Fritz Müller, [9 and] 15 April [1866] and n. 3, and [before 10 December 1866] and n. 9. There is an annotated copy of F. Müller 1866 in the Darwin Pamphlet Collection–CUL.
7
See letter from George Bentham, 30 April 1868. In ‘Three forms of Lythrum salicaria’, pp. 191–2 n. (Collected papers 2: 130–1 n. 15), CD argued that the existence of closed, self-fertile flowers did not invalidate his proposition that no species was perpetually self-fertilised. He added that his experiments indicated that the production of seed in perfect (opening) flowers of Viola was dependent exclusively on their being visited by bees, and was not ‘capricious and accidental’, as some thought, and suggested that the existence of opening flowers could be explained by the necessity of an ‘occasional cross with a distinct individual of the same species’.
8
CD received seeds of Ononis columnae and O. minutissima from John Traherne Moggridge in Mentone, a French town near the Italian border, in 1866 (see Correspondence vol. 14, letters from J. T. Moggridge, 5 and 6 July [1866] and n. 7, and 9 November [1866]); in Forms of flowers, p. 326, he recorded that in 1867, no perfect (opening) flowers of O. columnae were produced, but that in the following year, both perfect and cleistogamic (closed) flowers were produced. CD’s notes on the plants are in DAR 111: A21.
9
See Forms of flowers, pp. 326–7.

Bibliography

Collected papers: The collected papers of Charles Darwin. Edited by Paul H. Barrett. 2 vols. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. 1977.

Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.

Cross and self fertilisation: The effects of cross and self fertilisation in the vegetable kingdom. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1876.

Forms of flowers: The different forms of flowers on plants of the same species. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1877.

Haeckel, Ernst. 1866. Generelle Morphologie der Organismen. Allgemeine Grundzüge der organischen Formen-Wissenschaft, mechanisch begründet durch die von Charles Darwin reformirte Descendenz-Theorie. 2 vols. Berlin: Georg Reimer.

Marginalia: Charles Darwin’s marginalia. Edited by Mario A. Di Gregorio with the assistance of Nicholas W. Gill. Vol. 1. New York and London: Garland Publishing. 1990.

Orchids: On the various contrivances by which British and foreign orchids are fertilised by insects, and on the good effects of intercrossing. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1862.

Sprengel, Christian Konrad. 1793. Das entdeckte Geheimniss der Natur im Bau und in der Befruchtung der Blumen. Berlin: Friedrich Vieweg.

‘Three forms of Lythrum salicaria’: On the sexual relations of the three forms of Lythrum salicaria. By Charles Darwin. [Read 16 June 1864.] Journal of the Linnean Society (Botany) 8 (1865): 169–96. [Collected papers 2: 106–31.]

Summary

Sends Ernst Haeckel’s [Generelle] Morphologie [1866] and C. K. Sprengel’s book [Entdeckte Geheimniss der Natur (1793)].

A. Gaudry and L. Rütimeyer have declared in favour of CD’s views.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-6154
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
George Bentham
Sent from
Down
Source of text
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (Bentham Correspondence, Vol. 3, Daintree–Dyer, 1830–1884, GEB/1/3: f. 702)
Physical description
LS(A) 4pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 6154,” accessed on 19 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-6154.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 16

letter

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