To Friedrich Hildebrand   22 July [1866]1

Down. | Bromley. | Kent. S.E.

July 22.

My dear Sir

I received the enclosed from Dr Masters this morning & have read it again with extreme interest. It will be most useful for me to quote.2

In the paragraph marked 4 I think there is a serious mis-print of two instead of ten. 3 I hope it will not be too late for correction, if you will be so good as immediately to return the enclosed to me. I have also suggested with pencil a few trifling corrections, as more usual expressions not but that you write excellent English.

Will you be so good as to tell me where your paper on Oxalis is published, as I suppose you cannot send me a copy.4

Believe me my dear Sir | yours faithfully | Charles Darwin

P.S. I have only recently seen a kind & favourable review on my Lythrum paper in the Bot: Zeitung, & which from the initials I suppose was written by you.5

LS(A)

1
The year is established by the reference to Hildebrand 1866d (see n. 2, below).
2
CD refers to proof-sheets of Hildebrand’s paper on Corydalis cava (Hildebrand 1866d), which was published in the report of the International Horticultural Exhibition and Botanical Congress. CD had received the manuscript from Hildebrand, and had forwarded it to Maxwell Tylden Masters, honorary secretary of the congress (see letter to Friedrich Hildebrand, 16 May [1866] and nn. 3–5).
3
The correction was made in the published version of the paper (see Hildebrand 1866d, p. 157).
4
The reference is to Hildebrand 1866c. For CD’s interest in the paper, see the letter from Friedrich Hildebrand, 11 May 1866 and nn. 2 and 3, and the letter to Friedrich Hildebrand, 16 May [1866] and nn. 9 and 10.
5
Hildebrand’s review of ‘Three forms of Lythrum salicaria’ appeared in the January 1865 issue of Botanische Zeitung, pp. 50–2 (Hildebrand 1865b).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-5163F,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-5163F