To Wilhelm Breitenbach   20 [June] 18811

Down. | Beckenham Kent [Glenridding House, Patterdale.]

Jan 20th. 1881.

Dear Sir.

I am glad to hear that you have arrived safely in Brazil & are hard at work— I hope & believe that you will make many interesting & new observations— I think that you are wise to attend to the orders of Insects, which have been generally neglected—2 I suppose that amongst other points, Fritz Müller was thinking of the Ants which live in little cavities or cells in the leaves of the Melastomaceae—3 The manner of fertilization & the meaning of the 2 very different sets of Anthers in the flowers of the plants of this order would be worth attending to— I have experimented on these plants in hot houses with but little success—4 If by any chance you should come across any heterostyled annual or herbaceous plant & could send me seeds I should be glad of them, so as to raise illegitimate seedlings & test their fertility.5

I have directed my publisher to send you a copy of my last book, in which I was aided by my son Francis who is now working at Strasburg under De Bary.6

I received & was much interested by your paper on the several forms of reproduction7

I heartily wish you health & success, I do not think the want of books will be so serious an evil as you suppose—, for collecting & still more observing & making notes will fill up your whole time— I do not believe that Wallace Bates or Belt read much (nor did I) whilst at work in S. America.8

I remain Dear Sir. | Yours faithfully. | Charles Darwin.

Copy

1
The month is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter to Fritz Müller, 21 June 1881. The copyist evidently misread the month.
3
See letter from Wilhelm Breitenbach, [before 20 June 1881] and n. 7. Fritz Müller had not published on the relationship between ants and plants of the family Melastomaceae (a synonym of Melastomataceae). CD was made aware of the relationship of ants to plants of the melastomaceous genus Tococa when he read the manuscript of a paper on the subject by Richard Spruce (see Correspondence vol. 17, letter from George Bentham, 7 May 1869, and letter to Linnean Society, President and Council, [10 May 1869]).
4
Müller had written to CD about his observations of the different types of pollen in several plants of the Melastomaceae; CD had investigated some of these in 1861 and 1862 as possibly exhibiting a novel form of dimorphism (see letter to Fritz Müller, 20 March 1881 and nn. 2 and 3). CD told Müller that he hoped to repeat some of his earlier experiments (letter to Fritz Müller, 12 April 1881).
5
In earlier experiments with heterostyled (dimorphic and trimorphic) plants, CD had tested the fertility of offspring of ‘legitimate’ and ‘illegitimate’ crosses. CD referred to crosses made using pollen of the same form of flower in these species as illegitimate, and those fertilised by pollen of a different form as legitimate (see ‘Three forms of Lythrum salicaria’, p. 186).
6
Movement in plants; see letter from Wilhelm Breitenbach, [before 20 June 1881]. Francis Darwin was working in the laboratory of Anton de Bary in Straßburg (Strasbourg).
8
See letter from Wilhelm Breitenbach, [before 20 June 1881]. Alfred Russel Wallace, Henry Walter Bates, and Thomas Belt had all travelled in South America and had written accounts with observations on the natural history of the regions they visited (see Wallace 1853, Bates 1863, and Belt 1874).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13021,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13021