ure what the abortion of
the stamens in so irregular a manner can signify. But I fear from what
you say the plant will prove sterile, like so many others which increase
largely by buds of various kinds. Since I asked you about Oxalis, Dr.
Hildebrand has published a paper showing that a great number of species
are trimorphic, like Lythrum, but he has tried hardly any experiments.
(674/1. Hildebrand's work, published in the "Monatsb. d. Akad. d. Wiss.
Berlin," 1866, was chiefly on herbarium specimens. His experimental work
was published in the "Bot. Zeitung," 1871.)

I am particularly obliged for the information and specimens of Cordia
(674/2. Cordiaceae: probably dimorphic.), and shall be most grateful for
seed. I have not heard of any dimorphic species in this family. Hardly
anything in your letter interested me so much as your account and
drawing of the valves of the pod of one of the Mimoseae with the really
beautiful seeds. I will send some of these seeds to Kew to be planted.
But these seeds seem to me to offer a very great difficulty. They do
not seem hard enough to resist the triturating power of the gizzard of a
gallinaceous bird, though they must resist that of some other birds;
for the skin is as hard as ivory. I presume that these seeds cannot
be covered with any attractive pulp? I soaked one of the seeds for ten
hours in warm water, which became only very slightly mucilaginous.
I think I will try whether they will pass through a fowl uninjured.
(674/3. The seeds proved to be those of Adenanthera pavonina. The
solution of the difficulty is given in the following extract from a
letter to Muller, March 2nd, 1867: "I wrote to India on the subject,
and I hear from Mr. J. Scott that parrots are eager for the seeds, and,
wonderful as the fact is, can split them open with their beaks; they
first collect a large number in their beaks, and then settle themselves
to split them, and in doing so drop many; thus I have no doubt they are
disseminated, on the same principle that the acorns of our oaks are most
widely disseminated." Possibly a similar explanation may hold good
for the brightly coloured seeds of Abrus precatorius.) I hope you will
observe whether any bird devours them; and could you get any young man
to shoot some and observe whether the seeds are found low down in
the intestines? It would be well worth while to plant such seeds with
undigested seeds for comparison. An opponent of ours might make a
capital cas