My dear Dr. Darwin.

Since the announcement of your new work I had daily expected it, and was greatly and most agreeably surprised in getting a specimen of your own hand.¹ Allow me firstly and above all to tell you my best thanks for this most valuable present.

From the day when it was delivered to me, your book has been almost my only reading, and the latter has given me the greatest delight. I am sure, the multitude of new facts detected by you and the conclusions you have drawn from them, will have a reforming influence on a great part of botanic physiology. In congratulating you to this new publication I can merely tell, that it is only rivalled by the former works of the same great author.

Your book was the more important for me, because I was led on ground of own researches not yet published to results quite according to several of yours. For instance I was since long time convinced the bending of a horizontal radicle not being the direct effect of gravitation, but caused by the tip. To much occupied with other objects I had as yet not made any attempts to verify my conjecture, and am now much surprised by the most ingenious method you have shown the foundation of my supposition.²

With this letter I take permission to send you some little publications made by myself in the last years, begging not to deal to hard with the trials of a beginner.³ I should have dispatched them sooner, but I thought them scarcely worthy enough for this purpose, and from this cause alone you will excuse the delay. In a future time I hope to appear before you with better works—

More than nine years have elapsed since you honored me with the allowance of paying you a visit in the Down.⁴ I shall never forget this day, the finest remembrance I have taken with me from my abode in England.

Paying my best respects to Mr. Francis Darwin and repeating my thanks for your work, I remain, my dear Dr. Darwin, in high veneration | always and sincerely yours | H. Vöchting.