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Darwin Correspondence Project

To Fritz Müller   12 January 1878

Down, | Beckenham Kent.

Jan 12th. 78

My dear Sir

Though I have nothing particular to say I must thank you for your very interesting letter of Nov. 27th with many curious facts about the colours of flowers & the visits of Lepidoptera & the odours which they emit.— I am also particularly obliged for your answer about worms.—1

The Secretary of our Entomological Socy. takes great delight in your papers in Kosmos (which I lend him), & I sent him your last letter to read.— He has asked me whether he might read portions to the Society; & I hope that I have not acted wrongly in giving him permission. He has been observing himself about the odours emitted by insects, & wishes to give your observations.2

Many thanks for the seeds of Pontederia, if I can find time I will rear plants & afterwards raise legitimate & illegitimate offspring for comparison; but it is a wearisome task.—3 I & my son Francis have been working very hard on the spontaneous movements of plants & on Heliotropism & we have arrived at some, I hope, valuable results; but they are as yet hardly certain enough to be worth communicating to you.—4

Pray accept my cordial good wishes for yourself & family for the new year.— Every letter & paper of yours which I read excites my most lively admiration of your powers of observation.

Believe me | Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin

P.S. Should you ever be able to observe a sensitive Mimosa whilst it raining hard & is hot weather, I shd be very grateful.5

Footnotes

1
See Correspondence vol. 25, letter from Fritz Müller, [27 November 1877]. The surviving version of this letter is from the Transactions of the Entomological Society of London and is incomplete; the part about worms is missing. What CD had asked about worms is not known.
2
The secretary of the Entomological Society of London, Raphael Meldola, read portions of Müller’s letter to CD of [27 November 1877] (Correspondence vol. 25) to the society on 6 February 1878 (Transactions of the Entomological Society of London (Proceedings) (1878): ii–iii). For Meldola’s interest in Kosmos (a German journal devoted to Darwinian science), see Correspondence vol. 25, letter from Raphael Meldola, 20 October 1877, and this volume, letter from Raphael Meldola, 2 January [1878].
3
Müller believed at least one species of Pontederia (pickerel-weed) to be trimorphic (see Correspondence vol. 17, letter from Fritz Müller, 18 December 1869 and n. 3). CD had described heterostyly in two species of Pontederia in Forms of flowers, pp. 183–7.
4
CD published his conclusions in 1880, in Movement in plants.
5
For Müller’s reply, see the letter from Fritz Müller, 5 April 1878. CD had asked Müller the same question in his letter of 14 May 1877 (Correspondence vol. 25), having himself observed that sensitive mimosas closed their leaflets when sprinkled with warm water, but opened them to cold.

Bibliography

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

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

Movement in plants: The power of movement in plants. By Charles Darwin. Assisted by Francis Darwin. London: John Murray. 1880.

Summary

CD and son [Francis] working on spontaneous movements of plants and heliotropism.

Has given [Raphael Meldola] permission to read extracts of FM’s last letter [not found], on odours emitted by moths, before Entomological Society [Trans. R. Entomol. Soc. Lond. (1878): ii–iii].

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-11319
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
Johann Friedrich Theodor (Fritz) Müller
Sent from
Down
Source of text
The British Library (Loan MS 10 no 44)
Physical description
ALS 4pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 11319,” accessed on 19 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-11319.xml

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