Volume Ii Part 30 (1/2)

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.

LETTER 614. TO JOHN LUBBOCK (Lord Avebury). Cliff Cottage, Bournemouth, Wednesday, September 3rd [1862].

I beg a million pardons. Abuse me to any degree, but forgive me: it is all an illusion (but almost excusable) about the bees. (614/1.

H. Muller, ”Fertilisation of Flowers,” page 186, describes hive-bees visiting Trifolium pratense for the sake of the pollen. Darwin may perhaps have supposed that these were the variety of bees whose proboscis was long enough to reach the nectar. In ”Cross and Self Fertilisation,” page 361, Darwin describes hive-bees apparently searching for a secretion on the calyx. In the same pa.s.sage in ”Cross and Self Fertilisation” he quotes Muller as stating that hive-bees obtain nectar from red clover by breaking apart the petals. This seems to us a misinterpretation of the ”Befruchtung der Blumen,” page 224.) I do so hope that you have not wasted any time from my stupid blunder. I hate myself, I hate clover, and I hate bees.

(FIGURE 10.--DIAGRAM OF CRUCIFEROUS FLOWER.

FIGURE 11.--DISSECTION OF CRUCIFEROUS FLOWER.

Laid flat open, showing by dotted lines the course of spiral vessels in all the organs; sepals and petals shown on one side alone, with the stamens on one side above with course of vessels indicated, but not prolonged. Near side of pistil with one spiral vessel cut away.)

LETTER 615. TO J.D. HOOKER. Cliff Cottage, Bournemouth, September 11th, 1862.

You once told me that Cruciferous flowers were anomalous in alternation of parts, and had given rise to some theory of dedoublement.

Having nothing on earth to do here, I have dissected all the spiral vessels in a flower, and instead of burning my diagrams [Figures 10 and 11], I send them to you, you miserable man. But mind, I do not want you to send me a discussion, but just some time to say whether my notions are rubbish, and then burn the diagrams. It seems to me that all parts alternate beautifully by fours, on the hypothesis that two short stamens of outer whorl are aborted (615/1. The view given by Darwin is (according to Eichler) that previously held by Knuth, Wydler, Chatin, and others. Eichler himself believes that the flower is dimerous, the four longer stamens being produced by the doubling or splitting of the upper (i.e. antero-posterior) pair of stamens. If this view is correct, and there are good reasons for it, it throws much suspicion on the evidence afforded by the course of vessels, for there is no trace of the common origin of the longer stamens in the diagram (Figure 11). Again, if Eichler is right, the four vessels shown in the section of the ovary are misleading. Darwin afterwards gave a doubtful explanation of this, and concluded that the ovary is dimerous. See Letter 616.); and this view is perhaps supported by their being so few, only two sub-bundles in the two lateral main bundles, where I imagine two short stamens have aborted, but I suppose there is some valid objection against this notion. The course of the side vessels in the sepals is curious, just like my difficulty in Habenaria. (615/2. See Letter 605.) I am surprised at the four vessels in the ovarium. Can this indicate four confluent pistils? anyhow, they are in the right alternating position. The nectary within the base of the shorter stamens seems to cause the end sepals apparently, but not really, to arise beneath the lateral sepals.

I think you will understand my diagrams in five minutes, so forgive me for bothering you. My writing this to you reminds me of a letter which I received yesterday from Claparede, who helped the French translatress of the ”Origin” (615/3. The late Mlle. Royer.), and he tells me he had difficulty in preventing her (who never looked at a bee's cell) from altering my whole description, because she affirmed that an hexagonal prism must have an hexagonal base! Almost everywhere in the ”Origin,”

when I express great doubt, she appends a note explaining the difficulty, or saying that there is none whatever!! (615/4. See ”Life and Letters,” II., page 387.) It is really curious to know what conceited people there are in the world (people, for instance, after looking at one Cruciferous flower, explain their h.o.m.ologies).

This is a nice, but most barren country, and I can find nothing to look at. Even the brooks and ponds produce nothing. The country is like Patagonia. my wife is almost well, thank G.o.d, and Leonard is wonderfully improved ...Good G.o.d, what an illness scarlet fever is! The doctor feared rheumatic fever for my wife, but she does not know her risk. It is now all over.

(FIGURE 12.)

LETTER 616. TO J.D. HOOKER. Cliff Cottage, Bournemouth, Thursday Evening [September 18th, 1862].

Thanks for your pleasant note, which told me much news, and upon the whole good, of yourselves. You will be awfully busy for a time, but I write now to say that if you think it really worth while to send me a few Dielytra, or other Fumariaceous plant (which I have already tried in vain to find here) in a little tin box, I will try and trace the vessels; but please observe, I do not know that I shall have time, for I have just become wonderfully interested in experimenting on Drosera with poisons, etc. If you send any Fumariaceous plant, send if you can, also two or three single balsams. After writing to you, I looked at vessels of ovary of a sweet-pea, and from this and other cases I believe that in the ovary the midrib vessel alone gives h.o.m.ologies, and that the vessels on the edge of the carpel leaf often run into the wrong bundle, just like those on the sides of the sepals. Hence I [suppose] in Crucifers that the ovarium consists of two pistils; AA [Figure 12] being the midrib vessels, and BB being those formed of the vessels on edges of the two carpels, run together, and going to wrong bundles. I came to this conclusion before receiving your letter.

I wonder why Asa Gray will not believe in the quaternary arrangement; I had fancied that you saw some great difficulty in the case, and that made me think that my notion must be wrong.

LETTER 617. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, September 27th [1862].

Masdevallia turns out nothing wonderful (617/1. This may refer to the h.o.m.ologies of the parts. He was unable to understand the mechanism of the flower.--”Fertilisation of Orchids,” Edition II., page 136.); I was merely stupid about it; I am not the less obliged for its loan, for if I had lived till 100 years old I should have been uneasy about it. It shall be returned the first day I send to Bromley. I have steamed the other plants, and made the sensitive plant very sensitive, and shall soon try some experiments on it. But after all it will only be amus.e.m.e.nt. Nevertheless, if not causing too much trouble, I should be very glad of a few young plants of this and Hedysarum in summer (617/2.

Hedysarum or Desmodium gyrans, the telegraph-plant.), for this kind of work takes no time and amuses me much. Have you seeds of Oxalis sensitiva, which I see mentioned in books? By the way, what a fault it is in Henslow's ”Botany” that he gives hardly any references; he alludes to great series of experiments on absorption of poison by roots, but where to find them I cannot guess. Possibly the all-knowing Oliver may know. I can plainly see that the glands of Drosera, from rapid power (almost instantaneous) of absorption and power of movement, give enormous advantage for such experiments. And some day I will enjoy myself with a good set to work; but it will be a great advantage if I can get some preliminary notion on other sensitive plants and on roots.

Oliver said he would speak about some seeds of Lythrum hyssopifolium being preserved for me. By the way, I am rather disgusted to find I cannot publish this year on Lythrum salicaria; I must make 126 additional crosses. All that I expected is true, but I have plain indication of much higher complexity. There are three pistils of different structure and functional power, and I strongly suspect altogether five kinds of pollen all different in this one species!

(617/3. See ”Forms of Flowers,” Edition II., page 138.)

By any chance have you at Kew any odd varieties of the common potato? I want to grow a few plants of every variety, to compare flowers, leaves, fruit, etc., as I have done with peas, etc. (617/4. ”Animals and Plants,” Edition II., Volume I., page 346. Compare also the similar facts with regard to cabbages, loc. cit., page 342. Some of the original specimens are in the Botanical Museum at Cambridge.)

LETTER 618. J.D. HOOKER TO CHARLES DARWIN.

(618/1. The following is part of Letter 144, Volume I. It refers to reviews of ”Fertilisation of Orchids” in the ”Gardeners' Chronicle,”

1862, pages 789, 863, 910, and in the ”Natural History Review,” October, 1862, page 371.)