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Darwin Correspondence Project

To T. H. Farrer   10 August [1869]1

Down. | Beckenham | Kent. S.E.

Aug. 10th.

My dear Mr Farrer

Your view seems most ingenious & probable; but ascertain in a good many cases that the nectar is actually within the staminal tubes. One can see that if there is to be a split in the tube, the law of symmetry, would lead it to be double & so free one stamen.2

Your view, if confirmed, would be extremely well worth publication before Linnean Soc.3 It is to me delightful to see what appears a mere morphological character proved to be of use; it pleases me the more as Carl Nägeli has lately been pitching into me on this head:4 Hooker, with whom I discussed subject, maintained that uses wd. be proved for lots more structures, & cheered me by throwing my own orchids into my teeth.5

All that you say about changed position of peduncle in bud, in flower & in seed is quite new to me, & reminds me of analogous cases with tendrils. This is well worth working out, & I daresay the brush of the stigma.—6

With respect to the hairs or filaments (about which I once spoke) within different parts of flowers.— I have a splendid Tacsonia with perfectly pendent flowers, & there is only a microscopical vestige of the corona of coloured filaments; whilst in most common passion-flowers, the flowers stand upright & there is the splendid corona which apparently wd catch pollen.—

On lower side of corolla of Foxglove there are some fine hairs, but these seem of not least use,—a mere purposeless exaggeration of down on outside,—as I conclude after watching the Bees at work, & afterwd covering up some plants; for the protected flowers rarely set any seed, so that hairy lower part of corolla does not come into contact with stigma, as some Frenchman7 says occurs with some other plants, as Viola odorata & I think Iris.

I heartily wish I could accept your kind invitation, for I am not by nature a savage, but it is impossible—8

Forgive my dreadful handwriting, none of my women-kind are about to act as amanuenses—

Pray believe me | Yours very sincerely | C. Darwin

I am going to publish some notes on Orchids & will send you a copy: I give, but with utmost brevity, your correction of my two errors.—9

Footnotes

The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from T. H. Farrer, 8 August 1869.
See letter from T. H. Farrer, 8 August 1869. Farrer cited CD on symmetry in the double aperture in Farrer 1872, p. 501.
Although Farrer wrote up his observations on fertilisation in papilionaceous flowers in the autumn of 1869 and sent them to CD, he did not send them to the Linnean Society; they were published in Nature in 1872 (Farrer 1872; for the history of the paper, see ibid., p. 478).
See Correspondence vol. 16, letters to J. D. Hooker, 25 December [1868] and 29 December 1868; see also this volume, letter from J. D. Hooker, 15 January 1869.
The French botanist has not been identified.
CD cited Farrer in ‘Fertilization of orchids’, pp. 144, 146, for the information that the pollinia of both Ophrys muscifera and Peristylus viridis underwent a movement of depression.

Bibliography

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

Farrer, Thomas Henry. 1872. On the fertilisation of a few common papilionaceous flowers. Nature, 10 October 1872, pp. 478–80, and 17 October 1872, pp. 498–501.

‘Fertilization of orchids’: Notes on the fertilization of orchids. By Charles Darwin. Annals and Magazine of Natural History 4th ser. 4 (1869): 141–59. [Collected papers 2: 138–56.]

Nägeli, Carl Wilhelm von. 1865. Entstehung und Begriff der naturhistorischen Art. 2d edition. Munich: Verlag der königl. Akademie.

Summary

THF’s view, if confirmed, pleases CD in that what appears a mere morphological character is found to be of use. Carl Nägeli has been attacking him on this head.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-6859
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
Thomas Henry Farrer, 1st baronet and 1st Baron Farrer
Sent from
Down
Source of text
Linnean Society of London (LS Ms 299/8)
Physical description
ALS 5pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 6859,” accessed on 28 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-6859.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 17

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