To Friedrich Hildebrand   16 November 1868

My dear Sir

I wrote my last note in such a hurry from London, that I quite forgot what I chiefly wished to say, namely to thank you for your excellent notices in the Bot. Zeitung of my paper on the offspring of dimorphic plants.¹ The subject is so obscure that I did not expect that any one w^d have noticed my paper, & I am accordingly very much pleased that you sh^d have brought the subject before the many excellent naturalists of Germany.

Of all the German authors (but they are not many) whose works I have read, you write by far the clearest style, but whether this is a compliment to a German writer I do not know.

Will you tell Prof. Weisman that I have seen M^r Wallace & he will send a copy of his paper.² Please also to tell him that M^r. Bates’ paper on Mimetic Lepidoptera, published a year or two before M^r. Wallace’s in Linnean Transactions is eminently worth reading.³

Believe me my dear Sir, | yours very sincerely | Charles Darwin