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Darwin Correspondence Project

To W. C. Williamson   21 September [1878]1

Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.

Sept. 21st

My dear Professor Williamson

The specimens arrived dried up & shrivelled, but I have put them to soak, & I daresay that I shall be able to see their structure tomorrow, sufficiently to gratify my idle curiosity, for I am at work on other subjects.2

Many thanks for your kind offer of the plants: if you have any few seeds left & could spare them, I shd. like to see how the embryo breaks through the ground. In this case please inform me how you sow them, as I have hitherto failed in raising seedling Droseras.3

Yours very faithfully | Ch. Darwin

If I do not hear I shall understand you have no seed.—

Footnotes

The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from W. C. Williamson, 20 September 1878.
See letter from W. C. Williamson, 20 September 1878. Williamson had sent specimens of Drosera spatulata (spoon-leaved sundew). CD was continuing to experiment on movement in plants.
No reply to this letter has been found, but Williamson described how he sowed seed of Drosera capensis (Cape sundew) in his letter to CD of 13 January 1880 (Calendar no. 12423). See also Movement in plants, p. 414.

Bibliography

Calendar: A calendar of the correspondence of Charles Darwin, 1821–1882. With supplement. 2d edition. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1994.

Movement in plants: The power of movement in plants. By Charles Darwin. Assisted by Francis Darwin. London: John Murray. 1880.

Summary

Thanks him for plant specimens.

Asks about sowing Drosera seeds.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-11700
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
William Crawford Williamson
Sent from
Down
Source of text
American Philosophical Society (Mss.B.D25.)
Physical description
ALS 2pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 11700,” accessed on 23 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-11700.xml

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