1864.] ON PLANTS OF THE SAME SPECIES.' 305 



with conceit and vanity (if not already turned), and make me 

 an unbearable wretch. 



■ 



With most cordial thanks, my good and kind friend, 



Farewell, 



C. Darwin. 



[The following passage from a letter (July 28, 1863), to 

 Prof. Hildebrand, contains a reference to the reception of the 

 dimorphic work in France : — 



" I am extremely much pleased to hear that you have been 

 looking at the manner of fertilisation of your native Orchids, 

 and still more pleased to hear that you have been experi- 

 menting on Linum. I much hope that you may publish the 

 result of these experiments ; because I was told that the most 

 eminent French botanists of Paris said that my paper on 

 Primula was the work of imagination, and that the case was 

 so improbable they did not believe in my results."] 



C. Darwin to Asa Gray. 



April 19 [1864]. 

 , . . . I received a little time ago a paper with a good 

 account of your Herbarium and Library, and a long time 

 previously your excellent review of Scott's ' Primulaceae,' and I 

 forwarded it to him in India, as it would much please him. I 

 was very glad to see in it a new case of Dimorphism (I forget 

 just now the name of the plant) ; I shall be grateful to hear 

 of any other cases, as I still feel an interest in the subject. 

 I should be very glad to get some seed of your dimorphic 

 Plantagos ; for I cannot banish the suspicion that they must 

 belong to a very different class like that of the common 

 Thyme.* How could the wind, which is the agent of fertilisa- 

 tion, with Plantago, fertilise " reciprocally dimorphic " flowers 

 like Primula ? Theory says this cannot be, and in such cases 



* In this prediction he was right. See ' Forms of Flowers,' p. 307. 

 VOL. III. X 



