From M. T. Masters   2 November 1868

Gard. Chron. Office | Wellington Street | Covent Garden | W.C.

Novr 2. 1868

My dear Sir/

The other day I saw a basket of potatos that at once reminded me of Dr Hildebrand1   I secured a piebald tuber half purple half whitish (or less than half purple) and have desired it to be sent to you   This at any rate is no graft hybrid—it is just one of the pink eyed potatoes wh. has only been partially colored— whether it is a case of what Naudin would consider dissociation of hybrid characters is another matter—2 I doubt very much indeed any graft-hybridization taking place in potatos, the limited duration of the stock and other points would lead me to doubt the practicability of a perfect union by grafting taking place—but I speak theoretically ie not from practical knowledge—

faithfully yrs | Maxwell. T. Masters

P.S. I ought to add that there is a race of these pie-bald potatos—not merely one individual.

1
In the second printing of Variation, CD reported Friedrich Hildebrand’s success in grafting a red variety of potato with a white. The resulting graft-hybrid potato was white at one end and red at the other with a middle section of white streaked with red. Hildebrand later published the results of these experiments (Hildebrand 1868a). See Variation 1: 396 (2d printing).
2
For CD’s discussion of Charles Victor Naudin’s concept of disjunction of character, see Variation 2: 37. For Naudin’s discussion of disjunction, see Naudin 1865, pp. 150–6.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-6444,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-6444