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To Charles Hardy   27 July [1860]1

(Down Bromley Kent) | (now staying at Miss Wedgwoods |

Hartfield | Tonbridge Wells.)

July 27th

Dear Sir

Absence from home has prevented my answering your note & thanking you very sincerely for it.2 The correction of a blunder is a greater kindness than a new fact.—   I did not speak rashly, for I watched a large clover-field for many days, & never saw any Hive Bees at work.—   An experienced Apiarian also assured me of the truth of the statement; & the statement is made in Maunder’s(?) American Bee Keeper.—3 It has been a great evil to me publishing in abstract: for it was not possible for me to guard my statements sufficiently.—

I have twice seen Hive-Bee sucking single stunted plant of T. pratense. In the large clover field above alluded to which I had watched, was joined by a field of Sanfoin, & which was visited by thousands of Bees, when this was cut one morning, the Bees came to the Clover & tried to suck it & succeeded with some of the withered flowers & those at the bottom of the heads. So that if the flowers are smaller of the second-growth I can well believe that they could be sucked. This would be a very interesting little fact for me, & I will take the liberty of quoting your note4 & shd be extremely much obliged if you would make & communicate any further observations on subject to me—

Pray accept my sincere thanks for your kindness. & believe me | Dear Sir | Yours truly obliged | Charles Darwin

If Mrs. Hardy has not forgotten me, pray give her my best compliments.5

1
Dated by the relationship to the preceding letter.
2
See preceding letter.
3
CD probably refers to T. B. Miner’s American bee keeper’s manual, in which it is stated that red clover is useless to hive-bees (Miner 1849, p. 243).
4
Hardy’s point was incorporated into the third edition of Origin, p. 100: ‘I have been informed, that when the red clover has been mown, the flowers of the second crop are somewhat smaller, and that these are abundantly visited by hive-bees.’ See also Peckham ed. 1959, p. 184.
5
It is not known when CD made the acquaintance of Charlotte Hardy. Charles Hardy had been a student at Christ’s College, Cambridge, between 1822 and 1826 (Alum. Cantab.).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

0.1 (Down Bromley Kent)] square brackets in MS
0.1 (now … Tonbridge Wells.) 0.2] square brackets in MS
1.4 also] interl
2.1 single] interl

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-2879,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-2879