From Francis Darwin 23 [May 1881]1
Monday | (23?)
My dear Father
I am very glad that the corrections were good—it really isnt much work and it is a change from microscoping all day—2
Also many thanks for your letter I am v glad poor little Ubbadub is jolly.3
I think I should like some of my notes, as I shall want to refer I think undoubtedly—4 My notes were all classified and pinched in bundles but I am afraid I took the pinchers off— The only ones I should want are marked with a big big D in red or blue pencil, (which means I have made a diagram) & I think these are all together & if so I should like to have them, they wouldn’t be a very big bundle— But dont worry about them
I have been going on at roots Linum, Cucurbita, & Larch & Orchid; Maize I only had a long look at in a prepn of De Bary’s— I never thoroughly understood a root before chiefly because in our English Sachs he didn’t know about the different types and thought that a maize & a sunflower were the same type.5 There is a beautiful drawing of a maize root which is really perfectly right but which Sachs thought was wrong after he had published it because it wouldn’t go with the sunflower type which owing to Reinke was believed to be the universal type.6 This story is rather muddled however.
I didn’t telegraph about the notes because I couldn’t explain in a telegraph—
I went a long expedition in the Schwarzwald yesterday with Wortmann, & two other “praktikanten” Fisch and Bisgen.7 Bisgen has got Drosera to germinate and is going to feed & starve plants from their youth up—8 They only germinate almost in water only on the sides of the lump of peat near the water—a a
Yours affec | F. D.
Please tell mother I am quite content that she should teach Ubbadub what religion she likes9
The man who wrote a dissertn about the Cucurbita peg is going to claim priorität in the Bot Zeitung. De Bary is much amused at him & says he has discovered that he made a discovery10
I suppose certainly no printed proof came from the Linnean I expect about 2 pages more11
Footnotes
Bibliography
Darwin, Francis. 1878a. Experiments on the nutrition of Drosera rotundifolia. [Read 17 January 1878.] Journal of the Linnean Society (Botany) 17 (1880): 17–32.
Darwin, Francis. 1880a. On the power possessed by leaves of placing themselves at right angles to the direction of incident light. [Read 16 December 1880.] Journal of the Linnean Society (Botany) 18 (1881): 420–55.
Earthworms: The formation of vegetable mould through the action of worms: with observations on their habits. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1881.
Keynes, Randal. 2001. Annie’s box. Charles Darwin, his daughter and human evolution. London: Fourth Estate.
Movement in plants: The power of movement in plants. By Charles Darwin. Assisted by Francis Darwin. London: John Murray. 1880.
Reinke, Johannes. 1871. Untersuchungen über Wachsthumsgeschichte und Morphologie der Phanerogamen-Wurzel. Botanische Abhandlungen aus dem Gebiet der Morphologie und Physiologie 1 (1870–1): 1–78.
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.
Tscherning, Friedrich August. 1872. Untersuchungen über die Entwicklung einiger Embryonen bei der Keimung. Tübingen: Ludwig Friedrich Fues.
Summary
Would like some of his notes. Has been looking at roots of Linum, cucurbits, larch, and orchids. Is content that mother should teach Bernard whatever religion she likes.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-13170F
- From
- Francis Darwin
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Strasbourg
- Source of text
- DAR 274.1: 66
- Physical description
- ALS
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 13170F,” accessed on 26 November 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-13170F.xml