Volume Ii Part 46 (1/2)
It was very kind of you to send me two numbers of the ”Gardeners'
Chronicle” with your two articles, which I have read with much interest.
(753/1. ”Gardeners' Chronicle,” 1879, page 652; 1880, pages 108, 173.) You have quite convinced me, whatever Mr. Asher may say to the contrary.
I want to ask you a question, on the bare chance of your being able to answer it, but if you cannot, please do not take the trouble to write.
The lateral branches of the silver fir often grow out into k.n.o.bs through the action of a fungus, Aecidium; and from these k.n.o.bs shoots grow vertically (753/2. The well-known ”Witches-Brooms,” or ”Hexen-Besen,”
produced by the fungus Aecidium elatinum.) instead of horizontally, like all the other twigs on the same branch. Now the roots of Cruciferae and probably other plants are said to become k.n.o.bbed through the action of a fungus: now, do these k.n.o.bs give rise to rootlets? and, if so, do they grow in a new or abnormal direction? (753/3. The parasite is probably Plasmodiophora: in this case no abnormal rootlets have been observed, as far as we know.)
LETTER 754. TO W. THISELTON-DYER. Down, June 18th, 1879.
The plants arrived last night in first-rate order, and it was very very good of you to take so much trouble as to hunt them up yourself. They seem exactly what I wanted, and if I fail it will not be for want of perfect materials. But a confounded painter (I beg his pardon) comes here to-night, and for the next two days I shall be half dead with sitting to him; but after then I will begin to work at the plants and see what I can do, and very curious I am about the results.
I have to thank you for two very interesting letters. I am delighted to hear, and with surprise, that you care about old Erasmus D. G.o.d only knows what I shall make of his life--it is such new kind of work to me.
(754/1. ”Erasmus Darwin.” By Ernst Krause. Translated from the German by W.S. Dallas: with a preliminary notice by Charles Darwin. London, 1879.
See ”Life and Letters,” III., pages 218-20.)
Thanks for case of sleeping Crotalaria--new to me. I quite agree to every word you say about Ball's lecture (754/2. ”On the Origin of the Flora of the European Alps,” ”Geogr. Soc. Proc.” Volume I., 1879, page 564. See Letter 395, Volume II.)--it is, as you say, like Sir W.
Thomson's meteorite. (754/3. In 1871 Lord Kelvin (Presidential Address Brit. a.s.soc.) suggested that meteorites, ”the moss-grown fragments from the ruins of another world,” might have introduced life to our planet.) It is really a pity; it is enough to make Geographical Distribution ridiculous in the eyes of the world. Frank will be interested about the Auriculas; I never attended to this plant, for the powder did [not] seem to me like true ”bloom.” (754/4. See Francis Darwin, on the relation between ”bloom” on leaves and the distribution of the stomata. ”Linn.
Soc. Journ.” Volume XXII., page 114.) This subject, however, for the present only, has gone to the dogs with me.
I am sorry to hear of such a struggle for existence at Kew; but I have often wondered how it is that you are all not killed outright.
I can most fully sympathise with you in your admiration of your little girl. There is nothing so charming in this world, and we all in this house humbly adore our grandchild, and think his little pimple of a nose quite beautiful.
LETTER 755. TO G. BENTHAM. Down, February 16th, 1880.
I have had real pleasure in signing Dyer's certificate. (755/1. As a candidate for the Royal Society.) It was very kind in you to write to me about the Orchideae, for it has pleased me to an extreme degree that I could have been of the least use to you about the nature of the parts.
They are wonderful creatures, these orchids, and I sometimes think with a glow of pleasure, when I remember making out some little point in their method of fertilisation. (755/2. Published in ”Life and Letters,”
III., page 288.) With respect to terms, no doubt you will be able to improve them greatly, for I knew nothing about the terms as used in other groups of plants. Could you not invent some quite new term for gland, implying viscidity? or append some word to gland. I used for cirripedes ”cement gland.”
Your present work must be frightfully difficult. I looked at a few dried flowers, and could make neither heads nor tails of them; and I well remember wondering what you would do with them when you came to the group in the ”Genera Plantarum.” I heartily wish you safe through your work,...
LETTER 756. TO F.M. BALFOUR. Down, September 4th, 1880.
I hope that you will not think me a great bore, but I have this minute finished reading your address at the British a.s.sociation; and it has interested me so much that I cannot resist thanking you heartily for the pleasure derived from it, not to mention the honour which you have done me. (756/1. Presidential address delivered by Prof. F.M. Balfour before the Biological Section at the British a.s.sociation meeting at Swansea (1880).) The recent progress of embryology is indeed splendid. I have been very stupid not to have hitherto read your book, but I have had of late no spare time; I have now ordered it, and your address will make it the more interesting to read, though I fear that my want of knowledge will make parts unintelligible to me. (756/2. ”A Treatise on Comparative Embryology,” 2 volumes. London, 1880.) In my recent work on plants I have been astonished to find to how many very different stimuli the same small part--viz., the tip of the radicle--is sensitive, and has the power of transmitting some influence to the adjoining part of the radicle, exciting it to bend to or from the source of irritation according to the needs of the plant (756/3. See Letter 757.); and all this takes place without any nervous system! I think that such facts should be kept in mind when speculating on the genesis of the nervous system. I always feel a malicious pleasure when a priori conclusions are knocked on the head: and therefore I felt somewhat like a devil when I read your remarks on Herbert Spencer (756/4. Prof. Balfour discussed Mr. Herbert Spencer's views on the genesis of the nervous system, and expressed the opinion that his hypothesis was not borne out by recent discoveries. ”The discovery that nerves have been developed from processes of epithelial cells gives a very different conception of their genesis to that of Herbert Spencer, which makes them originate from the pa.s.sage of nervous impulses through a track of mingled colloids...”
(loc. cit., page 644.))...Our recent visit to Cambridge was a brilliant success to us all, and will ever be remembered by me with much pleasure.
LETTER 757. TO JAMES PAGET.
(757/1. During the closing years of his life, Darwin began to experimentise on the possibility of producing galls artificially. A letter to Sir J.D. Hooker (November 3rd, 1880) shows the interest which he felt in the question:--
”I was delighted with Paget's essay (757/2. An address on ”Elemental Pathology,” delivered before the British Medical a.s.sociation, August 1880, and published in the Journal of the a.s.sociation.); I hear that he has occasionally attended to this subject from his youth...I am very glad he has called attention to galls: this has always seemed to me a profoundly interesting subject; and if I had been younger would take it up.”
His interest in this subject was connected with his ever-present wish to learn something of the causes of variation. He imagined to himself wonderful galls caused to appear on the ovaries of plants, and by these means he thought it possible that the seed might be influenced, and thus new varieties arise. (757/3. There would have been great difficulties about this line of research, for when the s.e.xual organs of plants are deformed by parasites (in the way he hoped to effect by poisons) sterility almost always results. See Molliard's ”Les Cecidies Florales,”
”Ann. Sci. Nat.” 1895, Volume I., page 228.) He made a considerable number of experiments by injecting various reagents into the tissues of leaves, and with some slight indications of success. (757/4. The above pa.s.sage is reprinted, with alterations, from ”Life and Letters,” III., page 346.)
The following letter to the late Sir James Paget refers to the same subject.)