My Dear Sir,

D^r. Burdon Sandersons paper on the leaf currents in Dionoea has set me observing the insectivorous plants, and I wait longingly for your book, that I may see more wonders.² But some of my independant observations are most curious and one which mere accident has revealed is so startling that I hasten to send it to you, even at the risk of it being already known to you.

This afternoon I was hurriedly summoned from my plants and I left a Dionoea uncovered in a hot drawing room exposed to a full glare of sunshine

When I came back in a few hours it seemed doomed, the leaf stalks being much shrunken   Its traps were all open, so I tried to see if its nervous system were dead

I found that irritation of a nerve fibre (and we must I think give them that name) of one side of the traps caused incurvation of the fingers & closure of the flap on the opposite side only!

That is reflex action and as we find reflex action often most marked in certain forms of disease & injury which induce paralysis, it seems to me it occurs in this plant.

For instance, in health tickling the inside of the thigh does not induce elevation of the testicle by contraction of the cremaster muscle,³ save in the infant but after fracture of the spine it nearly always does. My poor dionoea, therefore, was paralysed

From what I have seen I am sure we shall find still greater reason to allow a nervous system for these plants.

I am watching a lot of my mice from whom I removed the tails at birth, and I am coming to the conclusion that the essential use of the tail there is as a recording organ, that is they record in their memories the corners they turn & the height of the holes they pass through by touching them with their tails⁴   Is not this queer.

With best regards to M^rs. Darwin & with tender recollections of my visit to Down,⁵ I remain, | Yours ever | Lawson Tait