To Gardeners’ Chronicle [14–19 January 1860]
Summary
Hopes readers will send information on the permanence of cross-bred plants and animals. No one doubts that cross-bred productions tend to revert in various degrees to either parent for many generations. But are there not cases of crossed breeds of sheep and pigs that breed true? CD believes occasional cross-breeding of varieties is advantageous in nature as well as under domestication. [See reply to this letter by J. O. Westwood, Gard. Chron. (1860): 122.]
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | Gardeners’ Chronicle |
| Date: | [14–19 Jan 1860] |
| Classmark: | Gardeners’ Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette, 21 January 1860, p. 49 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2658 |
To Gardeners’ Chronicle [13 April 1860]
Summary
CD acknowledges that Patrick Matthew, in his appendix to Naval timber and arboriculture (1831), anticipated by many years CD’s explanation of the origin of species by natural selection. CD was ignorant of the work. If another edition of Origin is called for, CD will insert a notice to the foregoing effect.
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | Gardeners’ Chronicle |
| Date: | [13 Apr 1860] |
| Classmark: | Gardeners’ Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette, 21 April 1860, pp. 362–3 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2766 |
To Gardeners’ Chronicle [4–5 June 1860]
Summary
Wants to hear from readers about the way in which the bee-orchid (Ophrys apifera) is fertilised. He has always found it to be self-fertilised but greatly doubts that the flowers of any plant are fertilised for generations by their own pollen. The bee-orchid has sticky glands, which would make it adapted for fertilisation by insects; this makes him want to hear what happens to its pollen-masses in places he has not observed.
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | Gardeners’ Chronicle |
| Date: | [4 or 5] June 1860 |
| Classmark: | Gardeners’ Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette, 9 June 1860, p. 528 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2826 |
To Gardeners’ Chronicle 15 September [1860]
Summary
Asks for any published reference providing account of the movement of the viscid hairs or leaves of Drosera lunata, an Indian Drosera which Lindley cites in Vegetable kingdom, p. 433.
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | Gardeners’ Chronicle |
| Date: | 15 Sept [1860] |
| Classmark: | Gardeners’ Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette, 22 September 1860, p. 853 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2918A |
| letter | (4) |
| Darwin, C. R. | (4) |
| Darwin, C. R. | (4) |
| Gardeners’ Chronicle | (4) |
