Ɛpsilon

To Adolf Ernst   11 September 1880

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

Sept. 11th. 1880

Dear Sir

I thank you for your very kind letter & for the seed of the Cobæa, which I will have sown.— I was much interested by your article on this plant, & especially by the evidence against M. Bonnier.— But you hardly put your case clearly enough; & I have seen your article (in the American Naturalist) quoted as supporting M. Bonniers view about nectar! Hermann Müller has reviewed Bonnier in Kosmos with extreme severity.—1

I shd. think what you say about the diminished fertility of the plant, which you artificially fertilised, probable; but then there always remains the doubt whether changed conditions under culture have not slightly decreased the fertility of the plant, as so often happens. The case of Lisianthus is an excellent one of structure & the movements of the parts, adapted for cross-fertilisation; but I do not see any special novelty.—2

With all good wishes I remain | Dear Sir | Yours faithfully | Charles Darwin

P.S It is possible that you might give me information on a little point, about which I am interested. Near Caracas do earth-worms throw up during the damp season vermiform castings of fine earth, as is so common in Europe. If they do, I shd be very glad of any facts soon,— whether many castings are thrown up?— on the plains or in the woods?— their size?— to what depths do the worms burrow?—

&c &c.—

1
See letter from Adolf Ernst, 7 August 1880. In his paper ‘On the fertilisation of Cobæa penduliflora’, published in Nature, 17 June 1880, pp. 148–9 (Ernst 1880), Ernst argued against Gaston Bonnier’s thesis that nectar was of no direct advantage to the plant (Bonnier 1879b, p. 206). See also letter from Adolf Ernst, 29 February 1880 and n. 7. For the statement that Ernst’s article supported Bonnier, see American Naturalist 14 (1880): 669. For Hermann Müller’s critique of Bonnier, see ‘Gaston Bonniers angebliche Widerlegung der modernen Blumentheorie’ (Gaston Bonnier’s supposed refutation of modern floral theory; H. Müller 1880b) in the July 1880 issue of Kosmos.
2
For Ernst’s description of his fertilisation experiments with Cobaea penduliflora, see Ernst 1880, p. 149. Ernst enclosed a sketch and described Lisianthus vasculosus (a synonym of Symbolanthus vasculosus; ring-gentian) in his letter of 7 August 1880.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

0.1 (Railway … S.E.R.)] parentheses added
1.2 much] interl
2.4 so] interl
2.4 case] after del ‘structure’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-12711,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-12711