To James Torbitt   3 May 1879

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

May 3/79

My dear Sir,

I am extremely glad to hear a good account of your experiments; & I shall much like to see your published report, whenever you can send me a copy. I have no practical knowledge about potatoes, but the specimens which you have sent seem to me & my gardener very fine & healthy ones. The case of the black potatoes is very curious, & I am particularly surprised at the flowers being odoriferous & being visited by many humble-bees, for this according to my experience is a rather unusual event.1 I presume the extraordinary amount of bud variation (as I call all non-sexual variation) is due to the parents having been recently crossed.2 It would be of no use to send the potatoes to Kew, for they have so many subjects to attend to they will not undertake anything fresh of such a nature.3 But I have today planted & labelled the two varieties & will hereafter report the result to you. I have been working rather too hard of late & leave home on May 6th for 3 weeks rest.4 No one can wish more heartily than I do for your complete success

my dear Sir | Yours sincerely | Charles Darwin

LS

1
See letters from James Torbitt, 30 April 1879 and 1 May 1879 and nn. 2 and 3. CD’s gardener was Henry Lettington. Potato flowers are scented but have no nectar; pollen can only be released by vigorous vibrating of the anthers by some species of Bombus (humble-bees or bumble-bees; the technique is now referred to as buzz pollination).
2
CD had discussed bud variation in Variation 1: 373–411; he had defined this type of variation as ‘all those sudden changes in structure or appearance’ that occasionally occurred ‘in full-grown plants in their flower-buds or leaf-buds’ (ibid., p. 373).
3
In his letter of 1 May 1879, Torbitt had suggested trials of the ‘Black 75’ potato might be carried out at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
4
Between 6 and 26 May 1879, the Darwins visited Worthing, Southampton, and Leith Hill Place in Surrey (CD’s ‘Journal’ (Appendix II)).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-12027,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-12027