From Fritz Müller   25 March 1877

My dear Sir

I have just finished reading with the most lively interest the new edition of your Orchid-book, which you have been kind enough to send me and for which I beg you to accept my most sincere thanks.¹

The day before yesterday I have returned home from a second excursion to the “Campos dos Curitibanos”.² Among the plants, which I there observed, I was particularly interested in a fine trimorphic Pontederia growing in small ponds. You will no doubt have received some years ago a small paper of mine on this genus. I had then seen the long-styled and short-styled forms of one species and the mid-styled form of a second species and thence concluded that these two species were trimorphic but I did not actually observe the three forms of either. I was therefore very glad to find all the forms of the third species.—³

A few months ago I sent to your son some hygroscopic seeds of grasses, which I had gathered on my first excursion to Curitibanos.⁴ I have now seen some more of these interesting grasses.— One species of Aristida⁵ is remarkable by dropping the whole flower-stalks, when the seeds are ripe; these flower-stalks with their long slender branches are carried away by the wind and sometimes accumulated so as to form a thick layer of hay. In this species the lateral branches of the trifid awn are rudimentary. Another grass is remarkable by its cleistogene flowers; the whole large panicula is enclosed within the sheath of the uppermost leaf, forming a long (0,5 Metre) fusiform envelop, which opens laterally, when the seeds are ripe. On the wayside some plants of this grass had been cut off, when the paniculae⁶ were developing and these had produced new paniculae, much smaller than the primitive ones, but free, (not enclosed within the sheath of the uppermost leaf) and bearing open flowers.—

On the campos of the southern provinces of Brazil (S. Paulo, Paraná, S^a Catharina, Rio grande do Sul) there appears to be a general belief in the existence of a gigantic subterraneous animal, which they call “Minho cão” (i.e. huge earth-worm). Most of the accounts given of it are truly fabulous; it is said to be “as big as a house”, six meters in diameter and sixty meters long!— It would have its skin covered by thick hard scales, like a Tatú, etc.— From the various accounts, I have been able to collect during my last excursion, I have come to the conclusion, that it is highly probable, that some very large animal (about 1 mètre in diameter), probably some cousin of Lepidosiren and Ceratodus, lives as yet in the large swamps which accompany the course of many of the smaller tributaries of the rivers Uruguay and Paraná.⁷

Repeating my hearty thanks, I am, dear Sir, with the deepest respect | very faithfully yours | Fritz Müller.