Alex. Agassiz has just paid me a visit with his wife. He has been in England two or three months, and is now going to tour over the Continent to see all the zoologists. We liked him very much. He is a great admirer of yours, and he tells me that your correspondence and book first made him believe in evolution. This must have been a great blow to his father, who, as he tells me, is very well, and so vigorous that he can work twice as long as he (the son) can.
Dr. Meyer has sent me his translation of Wallace's "Malay Archipelago," which is a valuable work; and as I have no use for the translation, I will this day forward it to you by post, but, to save postage, via England.
LETTER 682. TO F. MULLER. Down, May 12th {1870}.
I thank you for your two letters of December 15th and March 29th, both abounding with curious facts. I have been particularly glad to hear in your last about the Eschscholtzia (682/1. See Letter 677.); for I am now rearing crossed and self-fertilised plants, in antagonism to each other, from your semi-sterile plants so that I may compare this comparative growth with that of the offspring of English fertile plants. I have forwarded your postscript about Passiflora, with the seeds, to Mr. Farrer, who I am sure will be greatly obliged to you; the turning up of the pendant flower plainly indicates some adaptation. When I next go to London I will take up the specimens of butterflies, and show them to Mr. Butler, of the British Museum, who is a learned lepidopterist and interested on the subject. This reminds me to ask you whether you received my letter {asking} about the ticking butterfly, described at page 33 of my "Journal of Researches"; viz., whether the sound is in anyway sexual? Perhaps the species does not inhabit your island. (682/2. Papilio feronia, a Brazilian species capable of making "a clicking noise, similar to that produced by a toothed wheel passing under a spring catch."—"Journal," 1879, page 34.)
The case described in your last letter of the trimorphic monocotyledon Pontederia is grand. (682/3. This case interested Darwin as the only instance of heterostylism in Monocotyledons. See "Forms of Flowers," Edition II., page 183. F. Muller's paper is in the "Jenaische Zeitschrift," 1871.) I wonder whether I shall ever have time to recur to this subject; I hope I may, for I have a good deal of unpublished material.
Thank you for telling me about the first-formed flower having additional petals, stamens, carpels, etc., for it is a possible means of transition of form; it seems also connected with the fact on which I have insisted of peloric flowers being so often terminal. As pelorism is strongly inherited (and {I} have just got a curious case of this in a leguminous plant from India), would it not be worth while to fertilise some of your early flowers having additional organs with pollen from a similar flower, and see whether you could not make a race thus characterised? (682/4. See Letters 588, 589. Also "Variation under Domestication," Edition II., Volume I., pages 388-9.) Some of your Abutilons have germinated, but I have been very unfortunate with most of your seed.
You will remember having given me in a former letter an account of a very curious popular belief in regard to the subsequent progeny of asses, which have borne mules; and now I have another case almost exactly like that of Lord Morton's mare, in which it is said the shape of the hoofs in the subsequent progeny are affected. (Pangenesis will turn out true some day!) (682/5. See "Animals and Plants," Edition II., Volume I., page 435. For recent work on telegony see Ewart's "Experimental Investigations on Telegony," "Phil. Trans. R. Soc." 1899. A good account of the subject is given in the "Quarterly Review," 1899, page 404. See also Letter 275, Volume I.)
A few months ago I received an interesting letter and paper from your brother, who has taken up a new and good line of investigation, viz., the adaptation in insects for the fertilisation of flowers.
The only scientific man I have seen for several months is Kolliker, who came here with Gunther, and whom I liked extremely.
I am working away very hard at my book on man and on sexual selection, but I do not suppose I shall go to press till late in the autumn.