Dear Sir:

I wish to thank you for your kind and encouraging letter of Jan. 28, which was the more gratifying to me because quite unexpected.¹

The origin of heterostylism is a subject that I should much like to study if I were so situated as to be able to carry out the necessary experiments. While studying Oxalis violacea I had planned a series of crossing experiments on the variable O. stricta.² I see no reason why one with the proper facilities could not by the aid of selection and skillful crossing produce long, mid, and short styled forms in time, in a manner analogous to that in which I fancy the three forms have become fixed in nature. The difference in so minute a morphological character as the size of the pollen, and in such a physiological character as the sterility of illegitimate unions would, I suppose, be beyond the power or endurance of most men.³ If three such forms could be formed they ought to retain variability enough to allow of the production from them of forms like those of O. violacea and in a manner analogous to that in which I think the latter have been produced naturally.

Unfortunately I am moving from place to place a great deal, and it may be a long time before I settle where I can have the necessary time and facilities for such work, though if the opportunity ever comes I shall do what I can. If the forms indicated could be produced by artificial selection I think one might reasonably infer that natural selection might have worked in a similar way, though more slowly; in which case the value of crossing would be so important a factor as to explain the sterility of illegitimate unions, or any other physiological peculiarities.

I was very much interested in learning of the third form of Fritz Müller’s Pontederia.⁴

Once more thanking you for your kind letter, I am | Very respectfully yours, | Wm. Trelease.