Ɛpsilon

To W. T. Thiselton-Dyer   16 February 1877

Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.

Feb. 16th 1877

Dear Dyer

I must tell you how greatly I am pleased & honoured by your article in Nature which I have just read.1 You are an adept in saying what will please an author,—not that I suppose you wrote with this expressed intention. I shd. be very well contented to deserve a fraction of your praise. I have, also, been much interested, & this is better than mere pleasure, by your argument about the separation of the sexes. I daresay that I am wrong, & will hereafter consider what you say more carefully; but at present I cannot drive out of my head that the sexes must have originated from two individuals, slightly different, which conjugated. But I am aware that some cases of conjugation are opposed to any such view.—2

With hearty thanks | Yours sincerely | Charles Darwin

1
Thiselton-Dyer’s review of Cross and self fertilisation appeared in Nature, 15 February 1877, pp. 329–32.
2
For CD’s argument on the development of hermaphroditism from the primordial condition of separate sexes in plants, see Cross and self fertilisation, pp. 409–13; for Thiselton-Dyer’s counter-argument, see Nature, 15 February 1877, pp. 330–2.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-10848,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-10848