My dear Sir

It was very kind of you to send me the Dahlia flower, which is curious & pretty; but analogous cases have been occasionally observed. M^r Bree, who half-a century ago often wrote in Hort. & Nat. Hist. Journals, says that a Dahlia “bore two different kinds of self-coloured flowers, as well as a third kind which partook of both colours beautifully intermixed”.—¹ I could add other cases of such bud-variation.—

My dear Sir | Yours very faithfully | Charles Darwin