From Friedrich Hildebrand   18 May 1868

Bonn

May 18th | 1868

Dear and honoured Sir

Finally I can send you the copies of my notices on the potato-graft-hybrid and on the apples I spoke of in my last letter. You will see that they contain not much more than I wrote you before but I think you will like to have the drawings.1 The two potatoes have produced by this time large bushes in my garden and I am very curious what kind of knolls I shall raise from them. I have tried to repeat the experiment with the same and three other varieties of potatoes, but I fear without success⁠⟨⁠. The⁠⟩⁠ plants do not look very healthy and very likely will produce only knolls of the implanted variety. When the graft-hybrids make flowers I shall try to fertilize them in different ways, of course I shall intercross their parents too.

I adjoin a copy of a paper on some new Saprolegnieae and Syzygites, and I have pointed out—as I cannot expect you to read my description all over—some passages that perhaps will be of some interest for you.2

From a short review of the second part of your new book I saw that it must contain a great many things of high interest for me and as you had promised so kindly to send me the german translation I was waiting for it every day, but it appears that Mr Schweizerbart has not finished it as yet.3

This spring has been very bad ⁠⟨⁠for⁠⟩⁠ observation in our country, the winter lasted very long, and then it got warm so suddenly that most of the flowers came out and faded away in a few days, so the notices I have made on some things are not worth mentioning.

Now I must say Good bye and remain | Dear Sir | yours | respectfully | Hildebrand

1
See letter from Friedrich Hildebrand, 2 January 1868. Hildebrand’s comments on the potato hybrid and the apples were published in Hildebrand 1868; there is an annotated copy in the Darwin Pamphlet Collection–CUL. The paper was accompanied by a coloured plate illustrating the potato and the apple.
2
Hildebrand refers to Hildebrand 1867c. No copies have been found in the Darwin Archive–CUL. The Saprolegnieae (now Saprolegniaciae) are a group of zoosporic fungi; Syzygites is a pin-mould genus.
3
Hildebrand’s name appears on CD’s presentation list for the German translation of Variation (Carus trans. 1868; see Correspondence vol. 16, Appendix IV). The translation was being published by the firm E. Schweizerbart’sche Buchhandlung. Evidently the second volume was issued in parts (see letter from Friedrich Hildebrand, 3 July 1868). Christian Friedrich Schweizerbart had been succeeded by Eduard Friedrich Koch as director of the firm in autumn 1867 (Biographisches Jahrbuch und deutscher Nekrolog 2 (1898): 227).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-6182,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-6182