From Hermann Müller   15 February 1874

My dear Sir

Many thanks for your very kind letter I received two days ago. The negotiation of the cheque enclosed in this letter has been effected at Lippstadt without any difficulty.¹

My brother has indeed had the fullest success in investigating the economy of the South Brazil Termites and Melipona. I have had from him many wonderful letters about these subjects, and I shall be very glad to find the chief of his new discoveries published in Nature.² Perhaps in this publication you can make use of the here-enclosed drawings sent me long time ago by my brother?

Your and my brothers consenting judgements of my “Anwendung etc” are of the highest value to me.³ My brother writes me about this essay: “Your conclusions are so clear, so closely connected, so convincing, that scarcely any doubt may remain about the correctness of your statements. The only scruple I met with is, whether really the transition to providing the larvae with honey and pollen may afford any considerable relief to the mother, in comparison of her providing them with living insects. The weight of the food to be procured, it seems to me, is of less importance than the facility of procuring it, and, in general, it would perhaps be of less difficulty to drag a single caterpillar into the hollow than to collect half the weight of honey and pollen.

—This, of course, is of no bearing upon your conclusions—the less, as by the new custom a new field still free of concurrence was opened.” In a later letter my brother doubts the correctness of my statement, that of Dasypoda hirtipes⁴ near Lippstadt the males, near Weilburg the females are predominant in number. My brother himself has observed that the males of some Brazilian bees are fond of other flowers than the females, and hence an erroneous opinion about the number of the two sexes may easily arise, when one observer has more occasion to observe the favourite flowers of the females, another observer, on the contrary, the favourite flowers of the males.—

I am greatly interested by the new edition of your descent of man; when it has appeared, I will read it in English, having just now only read the German translation.⁵

My dear Sir | yours sincerely | H Müller.