Thanks GdeS for communicating his discovery. It is especially important at a time when several naturalists have declared that development occurs quite suddenly at intervals. Joseph Le Conte in N. America urges that even new families and orders are developed within an extremely short period.

He has heard CD is about to be elected to the Académie des Sciences.

Cross and self-fertilisation, with its emphasis on insect pollination, helps explain the problem he has worked on for so long: i.e., the rapid diversification of angiosperms in the fossil record occurs in conjunction with the diversification of insects.

Such honours as proposal for election to Institut affect CD very little.

GdeS’s idea that dicotyledonous plants were not developed until sucking insects evolved is a splendid one. The suggestion that fertilisation of the surviving members of the most ancient dicotyledons should be studied is a good one. CD hopes GdeS will keep it in mind.