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To Anton Kerner von Marilaun   20 November 1876

Down, | Beckenham, Kent.

Nov 20 · 76

Dear Sir,

You must allow me to have the pleasure of thanking you very sincerely for the great interest which I have derived from reading your essay on the Protection of Flowers.1 You have opened up quite a new field of research, and have explained many things which were before quite unintelligible to me  I see that I have fallen into some errors in the book on crossing which you will soon receive.2 I am however not yet convinced that bees discover the position of the nectar from the outside by the sense of smell.3

I remain, dear Sir | Yours very faithfully | Charles Darwin

LS

1
There is an annotated copy of Kerner’s ‘Die Schutzmittel der Blüthen gegen unberufene Gäste’ (The protective measures of flowers against uninvited guests; Kerner 1876) in DAR 139: 15.1. See also this volume, Supplement, letter to Anton Kerner von Marilaun, 31 October [1876].
2
Kerner’s name is on CD’s presentation list for Cross and self fertilisation (Correspondence vol. 24, Appendix IV); CD cited Kerner 1876 a number of times in the second edition of Cross and self fertilisation.
3
Kerner argued that insects in general could smell nectar, and that bees used this sense to know where to bite through the corolla of flowers (Kerner 1876, p. 57 n. 1); CD annotated this section in his copy of the paper.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-10681F,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-10681F