22/6/60
Dear Lederberg,
Thank you for sending me your reprints, which are most instructive.  The crack about Raph-anobrassica reminds me of the celebrated passage in the Letters between G.B.S. and Mrs. Patrick Campbell:--"We should have a child; with your brains and my beauty----".  "Yes, but what if it had your brains and my beauty?"
However, what I really want to
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know is this:  Is their[sic] any reason to think that, as with other protista, there may not be two quasi-conjugative processes in the bacteria life-cycle; one the (rather rare?) sexual act, and the other, the maturation of the resting stage by a syngamous[ . . . ]. The latter has been independently claimed by so many people, it is rather hard to disregard.  There may be no genetic evidence for it, but is there anything against it?  And if they aren't indulging in syngamy, then what on earth can they be doing?
Best regards to you both,
Sincerely,
Kenneth Bisset