From J. S. Burdon Sanderson 31 December 1880
7 White Rock Place, Hastings.
Dec 31st. 1880.
Dear Mr. Darwin,
Your letter, with the Certificate, has been forwarded to me here. I have great pleasure in signing it.1
The date of my Friday Evening Lecture, about which you are so kind as to enquire, is February 25. I send a Ticket as a Memorandum of the Date.2 I came here chiefly for the purpose of writing or at all events, preparing it. My leading position is that in the excitable parts of Plants, the mode by which the excited part influences other parts at a distance from it is (notwithstanding the absence of nerves) essentially the same as in the simpler excitable structures of animals. Prof Munk of Berlin in his long paper on Dionæa, as well as Sachs, denies the possibility of transmission or propagation of an excitatory effect, except by migration of liquid. I am going to make this point plain by a strict comparison of plant with animal phenomena.3
I have been reading more carefully the “Movements of Plants” I am specially interested in the 6th. & 7th. chapters.4
With best wishes for the New Year | very truly yours | JS Burdon Sanderson
PS. Mr. Busk has just been here. He wd. have signed the Certificate had he not been on the Council.5
Footnotes
Bibliography
Movement in plants: The power of movement in plants. By Charles Darwin. Assisted by Francis Darwin. London: John Murray. 1880.
Munk, Hermann. 1876. Die elektrischen und Bewegungs-Erscheinungen am Blatte der Dionaea muscipula. Archiv für Anatomie, Physiologie und wissenschaftliche Medicin (1876): 30–122, 167–203.
Sachs, Julius. 1875a. Text-book of botany: morphological and physiological. Translated and annotated by Alfred W. Bennett, assisted by W. T. Thiselton-Dyer. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Summary
Signs a certificate sent to him by CD [see 12954].
Sends CD a ticket to his lecture on 25 February, in which he will propose that the mode by which the excitable parts of plants influence other parts at a distance is essentially the same as in the excitable structure of animals, contrary to the views of Hermann Munk and Julius Sachs.
Interested in chapters 6 and 7 of Movement in plants.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-12958A
- From
- John Scott Burdon Sanderson, 1st baronet
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Hastings, White Rock Place, 7
- Source of text
- University of British Columbia Library, Rare Books and Special Collections (Darwin - Burdon Sanderson letters RBSC-ARC-1731-1-42)
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 12958A,” accessed on 17 August 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-12958A.xml