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Darwin Correspondence Project

To Friedrich Hildebrand   16 November 1868

Down. | Bromley. | Kent. S.E.

Nov 16 1868

My dear Sir

I wrote my last note in such a hurry from London, that I quite forgot what I chiefly wished to say, namely to thank you for your excellent notices in the Bot. Zeitung of my paper on the offspring of dimorphic plants.1 The subject is so obscure that I did not expect that any one wd have noticed my paper, & I am accordingly very much pleased that you shd have brought the subject before the many excellent naturalists of Germany.

Of all the German authors (but they are not many) whose works I have read, you write by far the clearest style, but whether this is a compliment to a German writer I do not know.

Will you tell Prof. Weisman that I have seen Mr Wallace & he will send a copy of his paper.2 Please also to tell him that Mr. Bates’ paper on Mimetic Lepidoptera, published a year or two before Mr. Wallace’s in Linnean Transactions is eminently worth reading.3

Believe me my dear Sir, | yours very sincerely | Charles Darwin

Footnotes

See letter to Friedrich Hildebrand, 14 November [1868]. Hildebrand’s review of ‘Illegitimate offspring of dimorphic and trimorphic plants’ appeared in the 2, 9, and 16 October 1868 issues of Botanische Zeitung (Hildebrand 1868b). CD’s copy of the article is in DAR 226.1: 217–19.
CD refers to August Weismann, Alfred Russel Wallace, and A. R. Wallace 1864a. See letter to Friedrich Hildebrand, 14 November [1868] and nn. 5 and 6.

Bibliography

Bates, Henry Walter. 1861. Contributions to an insect fauna of the Amazon valley. Lepidoptera: Heliconidæ. [Read 21 November 1861.] Transactions of the Linnean Society of London 23 (1860–2): 495–566.

‘Illegitimate offspring of dimorphic and trimorphic plants’: On the character and hybrid-like nature of the offspring from the illegitimate unions of dimorphic and trimorphic plants. By Charles Darwin. [Read 20 February 1868.] Journal of the Linnean Society of London (Botany) 10 (1869): 393–437.

Summary

Thanks for Botanische Zeitung notice of CD’s paper ["On the character and hybrid-like nature of the offspring from the illegitimate unions of dimorphic and trimorphic plants", J. Linn. Soc. Lond. (Bot.) 10 (1869): 393–437]. FH writes clearest style of all German authors.

Asks that August Weismann be told about papers by Wallace and Bates.

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 6461,” accessed on 23 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-6461.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 16

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