To Edward Frankland   28 April [1874]¹

My dear Prof. Frankland,

I am very much obliged for your letter which I will use, when I get some more information, though I do not expect to get another so good a letter.—² Your bird does not cut off the flowers nearly so truly & uniformly as do the wild birds, but then the wild birds manage primrose flowers better than cowslip flowers.— Your case, I think, proves that the habit is instinctive.— Good Heavens what a prodigy the brain of every creature is.— The eagerness of caged birds for green food must be a rather disturbing element. Could you get a good bunch of Primrose flowers or cowslip flowers & try once again; & observe whether your bird swallows any part of the cut-off portion, or merely presses them for, as I supposed, the nectar.— As the enemy is a bull-finch, it seems very likely that the young ovarium is swallowed; yet I can say positively that I saw base of pistil in several cases still attached to footstalk. I ought to have looked carefully at a greater number, but after a time I looked only to the bit of calyx still attached to the footstalk   When I go home tomorrow I will look for the ovarium in a greater number of cases.— I know that there are bull-finches in the little wood where there has been such devastation of the flowers.

In Haste | Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin

Your single experiment of giving the flowers to caged birds never occurred to me. See what it is to be an experimental chemist!!