Volume Ii Part 43 (2/2)
LETTER 731. TO G.J. ROMANES.
(731/1. The following extract from a letter to Romanes refers to Francis Darwin's paper, ”Experiments on the Nutrition of Drosera rotundifolia.”
”Linn. Soc. Journ.” [1878], published 1880, page 17.)
August 9th [1876].
The second point which delights me, seeing that half a score of botanists throughout Europe have published that the digestion of meat by plants is of no use to them (a mere pathological phenomenon, as one man says!), is that Frank has been feeding under exactly similar conditions a large number of plants of Drosera, and the effect is wonderful. On the fed side the leaves are much larger, differently coloured, and more numerous; flower-stalks taller and more numerous, and I believe far more seed capsules,--but these not yet counted. It is particularly interesting that the leaves fed on meat contain very many more starch granules (no doubt owing to more protoplasm being first formed); so that sections stained with iodine, of fed and unfed leaves, are to the naked eye of very different colours.
There, I have boasted to my heart's content, and do you do the same, and tell me what you have been doing.
LETTER 732. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, October 25th [1876].
If you can put the following request into any one's hands pray do so; but if not, ignore my request, as I know how busy you are.
I want any and all plants of Hoya examined to see if any imperfect flowers like the one enclosed can be found, and if so to send them to me, per post, damp. But I especially want them as young as possible.
They are very curious. I have examined some sent me from Abinger (732/1.
Lord Farrer's house.), but they were a month or two too old, and every trace of pollen and anthers had disappeared or had never been developed.
Yet a very fine pod with apparently good seed had been formed by one such flower. (732/2. The seeds did not germinate; see the account of Hoya carnosa in ”Forms of Flowers,” page 331.)
LETTER 733. TO G.J. ROMANES.
(733/1. Published in the ”Life of Romanes,” page 62.)
Down, August 10th [1877].
When I went yesterday I had not received to-day's ”Nature,” and I thought that your lecture was finished. (733/2. Abstract of a lecture on ”Evolution of Nerves and Nervo-Systems,” delivered at the Royal Inst.i.tution, May 25th, 1877. ”Nature,” July 19th, August 2nd, August 9th, 1877.) This final part is one of the grandest essays which I ever read.
It was very foolish of me to demur to your lines of conveyance like the threads in muslin (733/3. ”Nature,” August 2nd, page 271.), knowing how you have considered the subject: but still I must confess I cannot feel quite easy. Everyone, I suppose, thinks on what he has himself seen, and with Drosera, a bit of meat put on any one gland on its disc causes all the surrounding tentacles to bend to this point, and here there can hardly be differentiated lines of conveyance. It seems to me that the tentacles probably bend to that point wherever a molecular wave strikes them, which pa.s.ses through the cellular tissue with equal ease in all directions in this particular case. (733/4. Speaking generally, the transmission takes place more readily in the longitudinal direction than across the leaf: see ”Insectivorous Plants,” page 239.) But what a fine case that of the Aurelia is! (733/5. Aurelia aurita, one of the medusae.
”Nature,” pages 269-71.)
LETTER 734. TO W. THISELTON-DYER. 6, Queen Anne Street [December 1876].
Tell Hooker I feel greatly aggrieved by him: I went to the Royal Society to see him for once in the chair of the Royal, to admire his dignity and enjoy it, and lo and behold, he was not there. My outing gave me much satisfaction, and I was particularly glad to see Mr. Bentham, and to see him looking so wonderfully well and young. I saw lots of people, and it has not done me a penny's worth of harm, though I could not get to sleep till nearly four o'clock.
LETTER 735. TO D. OLIVER. Down, October, 13th [1876?].
You must be a clair-voyant or something of that kind to have sent me such useful plants. Twenty-five years ago I described in my father's garden two forms of Linum flavum (thinking it a case of mere variation); from that day to this I have several times looked, but never saw the second form till it arrived from Kew. Virtue is never its own reward: I took paper this summer to write to you to ask you to send me flowers, [so] that I might beg plants of this Linum, if you had the other form, and refrained, from not wis.h.i.+ng to trouble you. But I am now sorry I did, for I have hardly any doubt that L. flavum never seeds in any garden that I have seen, because one form alone is cultivated by slips.
(735/1. Id est, because, the plant being grown from slips, one form alone usually occurs in any one garden. It is also arguable that it is grown by slips because only one form is common, and therefore seedlings cannot be raised.)
(736/1. The following five letters refer to Darwin's work on ”bloom”--a subject on which he did not live to complete his researches:--
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