Ɛpsilon

To Otto Busch   26 June 1877

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

June 26th 1877

Dear Sir

I am much obliged to you for your very kind note & present of your work on Schopenhauer.1 I will endeavour to read it but fear it may be too difficult as I am but a poor German scholar.

Many thanks for your remarks on bees and clover. When I spoke of the red clover producing few seeds last spring, I stated that I supposed that it was due to the extreme rarity of Humble-bees (Bombus), for I have ascertained that this plant requires insects for its fertilisation, & I knew that Hive-bees do not visit the flowers, except sometimes for a secretion on the outside of the calyx, or for sucking the nectar from the outside through holes previously bitten by Humble-bees.2

With much respect & my thanks, I remain | Dear Sir | yours faithfully | Charles Darwin

1
The notes from Busch have not been found. CD’s copy of Arthur Schopenhauer: Beitrag zu einer Dogmatik der Religionslosen (Arthur Schopenhauer: Contribution to a dogma of the religionless; Busch 1877) is in the Darwin Library–Down (Marginalia 1: 104).
2
Busch evidently responded to CD’s letter to Gardeners’ Chronicle, 3 January [1877]. For CD’s observations of humble-bees boring holes in flowers, see Correspondence vol. 2, letter to Gardeners’ Chronicle, [16 August 1841]; on subsequent visits by hive-bees to the same flowers, see Correspondence vol. 6, letter to Gardeners’ Chronicle, 18 October [1857]. See also Origin 6th ed., p. 75.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-11019,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-11019