skip to content

Darwin Correspondence Project

From Samuel Newington   2 September 1875

Ridgeway | Ticehurst.

2nd Septr. 1875.

My dear Sir

I am glad you take an interest in the vine.1 This is the fourth year it has borne round berries. it is however only this year that the Black Hamburgh stock has produced a branch. which is evidently B Hamburgh, shewing that the sport has not influenced the type. I have three experiments in different forms.

I will try & make a sketch of the two vines.

diagram

A. B Hamburgh, B. Madresfield.

XX. the round berries of the Madresfield.

O Black Hamburgh branch, quite natural.

C. end of the Madresfield, D. end of the Hamburgh.

Another experiment: Madresfield inarched on Muscadine (a type).2 all the berries were round; I cut away the Muscadine, the berries continued round for the first year. this year they are oblong. but not the natural (large) size.

3rd experiment. The Muscadine which I cut away had a long piece of the Madresfield attached to the end of the Muscadine.

I allowed the Muscadine to make a shoot below the Madresfield. ‘this’ shoot I inarched on the end of the Madresfield. The Madresfield has this year oblong berries, & the Muscadine its usual round berries.

I did not mention that the duck’s feet are not webbed, excepting on two of the toes & these toes are deformed, it moves very slowly on the water & the feathers get wet.3

Perhaps you would take an interest in a discovery I made some years since with regard to the pulse being synchronous with the step while walking or running; presuming that a person walks about 80 steps in a minute; you will see what Sir J. Herschell wrote to me in answer to my letter on the subject.4

I this year—I made a second experiment with potatoes. I kept the tubers in the light until it developed a small leaf (about the size of a sugar plum) & some rootlets round this leaf. I then cut off the leaf with the rootlets. to the number of 23. I told my gardener to plant them. he would have laughed at me. but he knew my vagaries. these 23 leaves &c. have produced about 12 gallons of potatoes, some of the size of an ostrich’s egg, & quite free from disease. This has caused a confusion of ideas amongst my numerous gardeners. The man who actually planted them said he never expected to see any thing above the surface of the earth. This shews that there is no necessity to plant any part of the tuber if the rootlets are allowed to be developed while on the parent tuber, but the question is does this plan cut off the disease?5 time only will prove this.

Did you see that about 25 years since I wrote an article on the exudation of carbonic acid in Solution from the rootlets of plants, since then I wrote on the exudation of oxygen in solution. it struck me this might be a solution of several problems, Lindley took it up & was rather angry, he afterwards could not deny it. Daubeny I believe also entered into this theory (which I proved) but Dr Carpenter of Croydon told me he introduced it as his own idea. My articles were in the Gardeners Chronicle ie “the way that roots pass through a dry hard soil”6

I shall be very glad indeed to see you as I hope you will be interested in several of my hobbies, eccentric projects, probably derived from the too close contact with my patients.7

Yrs very truly | S Newington

PS. I will send the grapes in a day or two.

CD annotations

On diagram:
A] ‘Hamburgh | round grape’ pencil
B] ‘Madresfield Court | Oval grape’ pencil
D] ‘D’ pencil
C] ‘C’ pencil
3.1 A.] mark illeg pencil
End of letter: ‘Case of grapes very curious & extremely perplexing | give [both] of [them] | Berries | Carbonic A— not heard of— Sachs | Pulse & step, quite new | I return Sir J. Hersh letter’8 pencil

Footnotes

See letter to Samuel Newington, 1 September [1875]. Newington had written about two vines growing on their own roots but grafted (inarched) together, one of which seemed to have given its character to the other (letter from Samuel Newington, 30 August 1875).
Muscadine (Vitis rotundifolia) is a grapevine species; Black Hamburgh and Madresfield are varieties of Vitis vinifera (the wine grape).
Newington had described what he thought to be a duck–fowl hybrid in a now missing enclosure to his letter of 30 August 1875 (for more on the hybrid, see his letter of 10 December 1875).
The letter has not been found. The Herschel calendar, a comprehensive list of John Frederick William Herschel’s correspondence, does not include a letter answering this description.
There was a severe outbreak of ‘the potato disease’ (now usually referred to as potato late blight), caused by an oomycete, or water mould, Peronospora infestans (now Phytophthora infestans) in 1875 (Gardeners’ Chronicle, 31 July 1875, pp. 135–6).
The articles have not been found. Newington refers to John Lindley, Charles Giles Bridle Daubeny, and Alfred John Carpenter.
Newington was superintendent of a mental hospital.
CD’s annotations are notes for his letter to Newington of 17 September 1875. Sachs: Julius von Sachs.

Bibliography

Herschel calendar: A calendar of the correspondence of Sir John Herschel. Edited by Michael J. Crowe et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1998.

Summary

Tells CD of his many experiments on interarching vines, potato tubers, exudation of carbon dioxide from roots,

and the synchrony of the pulse and the step while walking.

Would like to meet CD.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-10148
From
Samuel Newington
To
Charles Robert Darwin
Sent from
Ticehurst
Source of text
DAR 172: 35
Physical description
ALS 8pp †

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 10148,” accessed on 28 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-10148.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 23

letter