To Fritz Müller [9 February 1876]
Down, | Beckenham, Kent.
My dear Sir
I hope I have not acted wrongly in sending your most interesting letter to “Nature” for publication.1 It seemed to me a shame to keep such interesting facts to myself. If your letter is printed, as I do not doubt will be the case, I will send you a copy.
The little bodies produced by Ceropegia resemble those on the leaflets of the “bull’s horn” acacia, which plant they have living at Kew, & I intend to get a specimen for my son & self to observe.2 Now unless you intend to follow out this subject, I should be very much obliged if you could send me some seeds of the Ceropegia; or would it be possible to send me in a letter enclosed in bladder or tin-foil a few shoots, which if the plant is a climber, might possibly keep alive so as to be propagated.3
In your last letter you spoke as if you would no longer be able to observe facts in Natural History, but I am convinced that as long as you are alive you will continue to make new & brilliant observations.4 Many years ago I suggested to you to publish a sort of Natural History Journal and account of the country, & I believe that you would thus make a book of extraordinary interest—5
My dear Sir | Yours very sincerely | Charles Darwin
Footnotes
Bibliography
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
West, David A. 2003. Fritz Müller. A naturalist in Brazil. Blacksburg, Va.: Pocahontas Press.
Summary
Has sent FM’s letter on to Nature ["Brazil kitchen middens, habits of ants, etc.", Nature 13 (1876): 304–5].
Would be grateful for Ceropegia seeds.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-10384
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- Johann Friedrich Theodor (Fritz) Müller
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- The British Library (Loan MS 10 no 38) (EH 88205868)
- Physical description
- LS 4pp †
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 10384,” accessed on 26 September 2022, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-10384.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 24