My dear Hooker

How good you have been about the plants, but indeed I did not intend you to write about Drosophyllum, though I shall be very glad to have a specimen.² Experiments on other plants lead to fresh experiments. Neptunia is evidently a hopeless case.—³ I shall be very glad of the other plants whenever they are ready. I constantly fear that I shall become to you a giant of bores.

I am delighted to hear that you are at work on Nepenthes, & I hope that you will have good luck.— It is good news that the fluid is acid: you ought to collect a good lot & have the acid analysed.— I hope that the work will give you as much pleasure as analogous work has me.— I do not think any discovery ever gave me more pleasure than proving a true act of digestion in Drosera. I am now just beginning to draw up my account of Drosera & its allies, but it will take me many months.⁴

I have become profoundly interested over Desmodium, & sometime I must tell you what little I have made out about it.⁵ I believe Frank has been invited by you to Kew (By the way Lenny enjoyed meeting D^r Huggins & the other great guns at your house) for Sunday: could you on this day permit him to look over (I am sure he w^d. be careful) the whole dried collection of genus Desmodium, & even perhaps of any closely allied genus; I want to hear the character of the leaves in most of the species, & the degree of variability of the leaves in the D. gyrans itself.— I have given him instructions on the chance.—⁶

Lastly have you any seed of Lathyrus nissolia?⁷ Or can you tell me where I sh^d. have a chance of begging a few; but do not write yourself—only give Frank address.—

Yours affect^y | C. Darwin