48 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Ch. H. 



Orchids, in which I showed how perfect were the means for 

 cross-fertilisation, and here I shall show how important are 

 the results. I was led to make, during eleven years, the 

 numerous experiments recorded in this volume, by a mere 

 accidental observation ; and indeed it required the accident to 

 be repeated before my attention was thoroughly aroused to 

 the remarkable fact that seedlings of self-fertilised parentage 

 are inferior, even in the first generation, in height and vigour 

 to seedlings of cross-fertilised parentage. I hope also to 

 republish a revised edition of my book on Orchids, and here- 

 after my papers on dimorphic and trimorphic plants, together 

 with some additional observations on allied points which I 

 never have had time to arrange. My strength will then 

 probably be exhausted, and I shall be ready to exclaim " Nunc 

 dimittis." 



Written May 1st, 1881.— The Effects of Cross- and Self- 

 Fertilisation was published in the autumn of 1876 ; and the 

 results there arrived at explain, as I believe, the endless and 

 wonderful contrivances for the transportal of pollen from one 

 plant to another of the same species. I now believe, how- 

 ever, chiefly from the observations of Hermann Miiller, that I 

 ought to have insisted more strongly than I did on the many 

 adaptations for self-fertilisation ; though I was well aware of 

 many such adaptations. A much enlarged edition of my 

 Fertilisation of Orchids was published in 1877. 



In this same year The Different Forms of Flowers, dc, 

 appeared, and in 1880 a second edition. This book consists 

 chiefly of the several papers on Hetero-styled flowers origi- 

 nally published by the Linnean Society, corrected, with 

 much new matter added, together with observations on some 

 other cases in which the same plant bears two kinds of flowers. 

 As before remarked, no little discovery of mine ever gave me 

 so much pleasure as the making out the meaning of hetero- 

 styled flowers. The results of crossing such flowers in an 

 illegitimate manner, I believe to be very important, as bearing 

 on the sterility of hybrids ; although these results have been 

 noticed by only a few persons. 



In 1879, 1 had a translation of Dr. Ernst Krause's Life of 

 Frasmus Darwin published, and I added a sketch of his 

 character and habits from material in my possession. Many 

 persons have been much interested by this little life, and I am 

 surprised that only 800 or 900 copies were sold. 



In 1880 I published, with [my son] Frank's assistance our 

 Power of Movement in Plants. This was a tough piece of 

 work. The book bears somewhat the same relation to my 



