1865-1881] F. MULLER 353 



Nevertheless, the self-fertilised flowers produced an abundance Letter 677 

 of seed. I enclose a few crossed seeds in hopes that you will 

 raise a plant, cover it with a net, and observe whether it is 

 self-fertile ; at the same time allowing several uncovered 

 plants to produce capsules, for the sterility formerly observed 



by you seems to me very curious. 



. 



To F. Muller. Letter 678 



Down, Nov. 28th [1868]. 



You end your letter of September 9th by saying that it 

 is a very dull one ; indeed, you make a very great mistake, 

 for it abounds with interesting facts and thoughts. Your 

 account of the tameness of the birds which apparently have 

 wandered from the interior, is very curious. But I must 

 begin on another subject : there has been a great and very 

 vexatious, but unavoidable delay in the publication of your 

 book. 1 Prof. Huxley agrees with me that Mr. Dallas is 

 by far the best translator, but he is much overworked and 

 had not quite finished the translation about a fortnight ago. 

 He has charge of the Museum at York, and is now trying to 

 get the situation of Assistant Secretary at the Geological 

 Society ; and all the canvassing, etc., and his removal, if he 

 gets the place, will, I fear, cause more than a month's delay in 

 the completion of the translation ; and this I very much regret. 



I am particularly glad to hear that you intend to repeat 

 my experiments on illegitimate offspring, for no one's observa- 

 tions can be trusted until repeated. You will find the work 

 very troublesome, owing to the death of plants and accidents 

 of all kinds. Some dimorphic plant will probably prove too 

 sterile for you to raise offspring ; and others too fertile for 

 much sterility to be expected in their offspring. Primula is 

 bad on account of the difficulty of deciding which seeds may 

 be considered as good. I have earnestly wished that some 

 one would repeat these experiments, but I feared that years 

 would elapse before any one would take the trouble. I re- 

 ceived your paper on Bignonia 2 in Bot. Zeit.> and it interested 



1 Facts and Arguments for Darwin, 1869, a translation by the late 

 Mr. Dallas of F. Miiller's Fur Darwin, 1864 : see Vol. I., Letter 227. 



2 See Variation of Animals and Plants, Ed. II., Vol. II., p. 117. Fritz 

 Muller's paper, " Befruchtungsversuche an Cip6 alho (Rignonia)" 

 Botanische Zeitung, Sept. 25th, 1868, p. 625, contains an interesting 



VOL. II. 23 



