To Hermann Müller   30 May 1873

Down, Beckenham, Kent

May 30. 1873

My dear Sir

I am much obliged for your letter received this morning.1 I write now chiefly to give myself the pleasure of telling you how cordially I admire the last part of your book, which I have finished.2 The whole discussion seems to me quite excellent, and it has pleased me not a little to find that in the rough M.S. of my last chapter, I have arrived on many points at nearly the same conclusions that you have done, though we have reached them by different routes.—3 Ich hoffe, mein Buch wird Sie, wenn immer es erscheinen mag, interessiren, aber wenn ich Ihr Buch hätte vor sieben Jahren lesen können, würde ich meine Versuche vielmals nützlicher haben einrichten können.4

Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin

Copy

1
This letter was first published in Correspondence vol. 21, without the German text at the end, which is from the German translation of the whole letter in Krause 1884. The English original has not been found; the English text is from an incomplete copy. For Müller’s letter to CD, see Correspondence vol. 21, letter from Hermann Müller, 27 May 1873.
2
See Correspondence vol. 21, letter to Hermann Müller, 5 May 1873 and n. 1. The last section of Müller’s Die Befruchtung der Blumen durch Insekten (The fertilisation of flowers by means of insects; H. Müller 1873) considers the application of selection theory to the morphology and physiology of flowers and summarises the various floral characteristics in relation to attracting insects and ensuring fertilisation.
3
CD refers to the chapter ‘Summary of the heights and weights of the crossed and self-fertilised plants’ from the manuscript of Cross and self fertilisation, which contains references to H. Müller 1873 (DAR 4; see also Cross and self fertilisation, pp. 238–85).
4
‘I hope my book, whenever it appears, will interest you; but had I been able to read your book seven years ago, I could have made my experiments much more useful.’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-8929,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-8929