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Letter from Hermann Müller to Charles Robert Darwin   5 May 1872

Lippstadt

5 May 1872.

My dear Sir

Your kind letter has very much delighted me.1 That my essay on bees2 has given many facts new and interesting to you, will encourage and incite me most efficaciously to apply my leisure-time also whilst this coming summer and the next ones to the observation of bees.

I have read with the greatest interest your courious observations “on the routes of the males of Bombus”.3 The fact was quite unknown to me, and I will do my best for making observations on this subject. Many thanks for your great kindness in having confided to me your manuscript.

My work on the fertilisation of flowers by insects and the reciprocal adaptations of both is now finished, and yesterday I have sent the manuscript to the publisher (W. Engelmann of Leipzig)   As soon as I receive exemplars, I send you one.4

With my best thanks believe me, my dear Sir | yours very sincerely | H Müller.

DAR 171: 298

Notes

2

H. Müller 1872.

4

Müller’s Die Befruchtung der Blumen durch Insekten und die gegenseitigen Anpassung beiden (The fertilisation of flowers by insects and their mutual adaptation; H. Müller 1873) was published by Wilhelm Engelmann. There is an annotated copy in the Darwin Library–CUL (see Marginalia 1: 610–12).