LETTER 613. TO JOHN LUBBOCK (Lord Avebury). Cliff Cottage, Bournemouth,

Hants, September 2nd [1862].

Hearty thanks for your note. I am so glad that your tour answered so splendidly. My poor patients (613/1. Mrs. Darwin and one of her sons, both recovering from scarlet fever.) got here yesterday, and are doing well, and we have a second house for the well ones. I write now in great haste to beg you to look (though I know how busy you are, but I cannot think of any other naturalist who would be careful) at any field of common red clover (if such a field is near you) and watch the hive-bees: probably (if not too late) you will see some sucking at the mouth of the little flowers and some few sucking at the base of the flowers, at holes bitten through the corollas. All that you will see is that the bees put their heads deep into the [flower] head and rout about. Now, if you see this, do for Heaven's sake catch me some of each and put in spirits and keep them separate. I am almost certain that they belong to two castes, with long and short proboscids. This is so curious a point that it seems worth making out. I cannot hear of a clover field near here.