ame time allowing several uncovered plants to
produce capsules, for the sterility formerly observed by you seems to me
very curious.

LETTER 678. TO F. MULLER. Down, November 28th [1868].

You end your letter of September 9th by saying that it is a very
dull one; indeed, you make a very great mistake, for it abounds with
interesting facts and thoughts. Your account of the tameness of the
birds which apparently have wandered from the interior, is very curious.
But I must begin on another subject: there has been a great and very
vexatious, but unavoidable delay in the publication of your book.
(678/1. "Facts and Arguments for Darwin," 1869, a translation by the
late Mr. Dallas of F. Muller's "Fur Darwin," 1864: see Volume I., Letter
227.) Prof. Huxley agrees with me that Mr. Dallas is by far the best
translator, but he is much overworked and had not quite finished the
translation about a fortnight ago. He has charge of the Museum at York,
and is now trying to get the situation of Assistant Secretary at the
Geological Society; and all the canvassing, etc., and his removal, if
he gets the place, will, I fear, cause more than a month's delay in the
completion of the translation; and this I very much regret.

I am particularly glad to hear that you intend to repeat my experiments
on illegitimate offspring, for no one's observations can be trusted
until repeated. You will find the work very troublesome, owing to the
death of plants and accidents of all kinds. Some dimorphic plant will
probably prove too sterile for you to raise offspring; and others too
fertile for much sterility to be expected in their offspring. Primula
is bad on account of the difficulty of deciding which seeds may be
considered as good. I have earnestly wished that some one would repeat
these experiments, but I feared that years would elapse before any
one would take the trouble. I received your paper on Bignonia in "Bot.
Zeit." and it interested me much. (678/2. See "Variation of Animals
and Plants," Edition II., Volume II., page 117. Fritz Muller's paper,
"Befruchtungsversuche an Cipo alho (Bignonia)," "Botanische Zeitung,"
September 25th, 1868, page 625, contains an interesting foreshadowing of
the generalisation arrived at in "Cross and Self-Fertilisation." Muller
wrote: "Are the three which grow near each other seedlings from the same
mother-plant or perhaps from seeds of the same capsule? Or have they,
from growing in the same place and under the