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.