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Darwin Correspondence Project

To Friedrich Hildebrand   22 July [1866]1

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

July 22.

My dear Sir

I received the enclosed from Dr Masters this morning & have read it again with extreme interest. It will be most useful for me to quote.2

In the paragraph marked 4 I think there is a serious mis-print of two instead of ten. 3 I hope it will not be too late for correction, if you will be so good as immediately to return the enclosed to me. I have also suggested with pencil a few trifling corrections, as more usual expressions not but that you write excellent English.

Will you be so good as to tell me where your paper on Oxalis is published, as I suppose you cannot send me a copy.4

Believe me my dear Sir | yours faithfully | Charles Darwin

P.S. I have only recently seen a kind & favourable review on my Lythrum paper in the Bot: Zeitung, & which from the initials I suppose was written by you.5

Footnotes

The year is established by the reference to Hildebrand 1866d (see n. 2, below).
CD refers to proof-sheets of Hildebrand’s paper on Corydalis cava (Hildebrand 1866d), which was published in the report of the International Horticultural Exhibition and Botanical Congress. CD had received the manuscript from Hildebrand, and had forwarded it to Maxwell Tylden Masters, honorary secretary of the congress (see letter to Friedrich Hildebrand, 16 May [1866] and nn. 3–5).
The correction was made in the published version of the paper (see Hildebrand 1866d, p. 157).
The reference is to Hildebrand 1866c. For CD’s interest in the paper, see the letter from Friedrich Hildebrand, 11 May 1866 and nn. 2 and 3, and the letter to Friedrich Hildebrand, 16 May [1866] and nn. 9 and 10.
Hildebrand’s review of ‘Three forms of Lythrum salicaria appeared in the January 1865 issue of Botanische Zeitung, pp. 50–2 (Hildebrand 1865b).

Bibliography

‘Three forms of Lythrum salicaria’: On the sexual relations of the three forms of Lythrum salicaria. By Charles Darwin. [Read 16 June 1864.] Journal of the Linnean Society (Botany) 8 (1865): 169–96. [Collected papers 2: 106–31.]

Summary

Points out an error in proof-sheets of Hildebrand’s paper on Corydalis cava (Hildebrand 1866d) and suggests some improvements to the English.

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 5163F,” accessed on 28 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-5163F.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 14

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