Dear and honoured Sir

You will excuse me that I have not answered your letter at once, but as I had no seeds of Nolana prostrata I wrote for them to Vienna, where I knew that they cultivate this species.¹ I have been waiting for an answer till today, but in vain, so I will not keep you awaiting any longer and send you the seeds of Hibiscus Trionum L = H. africanus Roth,² that are grown in our botanical garden. I hope that this will bee the wanted species. Instead of Nolana prostrata I send you some seeds of N. grandiflora, perhaps you can make some use of them.³

Last year I experimentized with Oxalis Valdiviana⁴ and found that only the combinations of the sexual organs of equal hight in the three forms were fertile. This year I have seen that the offspring of these combinations belongs partly to the mother partly to the father-form, very few to that form, that has had no part in producing the said offspring. I had not expected that there would be any individual that did not belong to the parent forms, but I think that the reason of this may be that one of the parents has been the offspring of the third form—so the childeren belong partly to the form of the mother, partly to that of the father, and a smaller part to that of the grandfather or grandmother. Allow me to give you an example:

The middle styled form was fertilized with the upper antherae of the long styled and the offspring were: middlestyled 21, longstyled 15, shortstyled 2.⁵

I beg your pardon that I have written this rather in a hurry, but I wished to have the letter ready before perhaps the war interrupts the communications.⁶

Believe me dear Sir with my best wishes | yours | respectfully | Hildebrand