To Lawson Tait 20 July [1875]1
Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.
July 20th
My dear Sir
I despatched of course your article.—2 I read it rather hurriedly to catch morning post. I will read it deliberately when published.— If you have succeeded in separating the ferment the fact is manifestly most important.3 Did you try whether the fluid from pitchers with no animal matter could digest? This, I think, ought to have been done to prove that there was ferment in the fluid.4 Glad to hear about the passage for guiding insects, as I speculated & told Hooker I guessed that this was the case.—5
Yours sincerely | Ch. Darwin
Footnotes
Bibliography
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
Summary
CD returns MS of a paper by RLT. "If you have succeeded in separating the ferment, the fact is manifestly important." Asks whether RLT tested the digestive ability of fluid from pitchers without animal matter. This would be necessary to prove that there was ferment in the fluid. CD is glad to hear about the [passage?] for guiding insects; he had guessed this to be the case.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-10080
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- Robert Lawson (Lawson) Tait
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- DAR 221.5: 28
- Physical description
- ALS 2pp (photocopy)
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 10080,” accessed on 16 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-10080.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 23
