To W. T. Thiselton-Dyer 16 February 1877
Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.
Feb. 16th 1877
Dear Dyer
I must tell you how greatly I am pleased & honoured by your article in Nature which I have just read.1 You are an adept in saying what will please an author,—not that I suppose you wrote with this expressed intention. I shd. be very well contented to deserve a fraction of your praise. I have, also, been much interested, & this is better than mere pleasure, by your argument about the separation of the sexes. I daresay that I am wrong, & will hereafter consider what you say more carefully; but at present I cannot drive out of my head that the sexes must have originated from two individuals, slightly different, which conjugated. But I am aware that some cases of conjugation are opposed to any such view.—2
With hearty thanks | Yours sincerely | Charles Darwin
Footnotes
Bibliography
Cross and self fertilisation: The effects of cross and self fertilisation in the vegetable kingdom. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1876.
Summary
Pleased and honoured by WTT-D’s review ["Darwin on fertilisation", Nature 15 (1876–77): 329–32]. Comments on review.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-10848
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- William Turner Thiselton-Dyer
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (Darwin: Letters to Thiselton-Dyer, 1873–81: ff. 60–1)
- Physical description
- ALS 3pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 10848,” accessed on 23 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-10848.xml