My dear Lyell

I was very glad to get your note, as only a few days ago I was much wishing to hear where & how you were.¹ I received the apples only today, as they were directed to Beckenham instead of to Orpington Station; & I have been very glad carefully to compare them.²

The seedlings from the same parent are wonderfully alike in the fruit & apparently in their now withered leaves. I forget what Hooker says; but I have long been well aware that reversions to the crab-state are exceptional & far from close.³ Indeed the wild crabs themselves are very perplexing & differ much. If you care to see what I have said very briefly on the subject, you will find a passage in my Var. under Dom. Vol. 2. p. 350 & a line or 2 in Vol 1. p 31—⁴ I do not believe that inheritance is so general with apple trees, as Mr Wood thinks. Many have tried, but no one has raised a new Ribstone or Golden Pippin; tho’ one of Andrew Knight’s seedlings makes an approach to the latter.⁵ The most surprising statement in Mr Wood’s letter seems to me to be about the sterility of his seedlings, as I suppose they must now be several years old.⁶ It is still more remarkable that his parent trees were not intercrossed, as probably many kinds were in flower at the same time. As I can hardly doubt that bees must carry pollen from tree to tree (which c^d be easily proved by cutting off the stamens of several flowers before they opened, & afterwards examining the stigmas) it really looks as if the pollen of the above named vars. was prepotent over that of other vars; & if so they certainly have the character of species.⁷ It w^d be a grand experiment to fertilize some flowers of the Hawthornden with pollen from a distinct plant or best a seedling of the same var. & with pollen of some other & very different var., & see the character of the seedlings thus produced; but I am too old for such a work.

I have been rather bad of late, & am now under very strict orders by D^r A. Clark;⁸ but I very much hope that later in the autumn, if a little change w^d do you any good, that you will pay us a visit together with Miss Lyell. Her name vividly recalls many delightful evenings in Hart S^t.⁹

Believe me, my dear Lyell | Your old & affectionate pupil | Ch. Darwin