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From Maxwell Tylden Masters   21 January 1869

Gardeners’ Chronicle | & Agricultural Gazette Office, | 41, Wellington Street, Strand, W.C.

Jan 21 1869

My dear Sir/

Did you ever get the piebald potato?1 I greatly fear you did not— I have another wh. I should like to send you though the colors have faded—and also a spray of Holly for a full account of wh. see the Chronicle of Saturday (tomorrow) (under Science Committee Hort. Soc.) and also a statement of Revd. F W Radclyffe as to grafting potatoes in Home Corresp— I have written to him for further information—2

Mr Fish who sends the Holly also sends some fasciated branches of Sycamore for your inspection but they are in no wise different from the ordinary fasciated branches.

What is the best means of sending small parcels to you

faithfully yrs | Maxwell. T. Masters

Chas. Darwin Esq

1
After reading CD’s account of Friedrich Hildebrand’s success in grafting a red variety of potato with a white (Variation 1: 396, 2d printing), Masters had arranged to have a potato of mixed purple and white colour sent to CD in November 1868, but expressed doubt about the occurrence of graft-hybridisation in potatoes (see Correspondence vol. 16, letter from M. T. Masters, 2 November 1868).
2
Masters refers to an account and specimens sent by David Taylor Fish of a yellow-berried holly that had produced a shoot with orange-red berries (Gardeners’ Chronicle, 23 January 1869, p. 83) and to a letter from William Frederick Radclyffe on hybrid potatoes (ibid., p. 81).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-6564,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-6564