To S. H. Vines 15 November 1881
Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | (Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.)
November 15. 1881
My dear Mr. Vines,
I hope that you will excuse me troubling you once again about the roots of Euphorbia peplus.1 I can see my way a little & but a very little way clearer, for by examining the radicles of germinating seeds I have learnt the appearance of the milk-tubes, & beautiful objects they are. Now in the rootlets of mature plants of Euphorbia peplus these tubes are absent, & I remember that De Bary says that he could not succeed in seeing them in the finer roots of Euphorbia, but I must hunt up the passage.2 The usually alternate rows of cells with brown granular matter near the surface & those in the Endoderm, I imagine replace by their contents the contents of the true milk-tubes; though I must own that the contents are not chemically the same, as Caustic potash does not act on the aggregated granular masses in the milk-tubes, whereas it causes the disappearance of the granular matter which is precipitated by C. of Ammonia & other salts, in the cells.— If you ever look at the roots of E. peplus, I shd. very much like to hear what you think about them. With Euphorbia myrsinites,3 there are no regular rows of cells with granular matter after Ammonia, & only here & there one, or two or three cells in a row with the granular matter; & in the mature rootlets of this species only a few milk-tubes are present; but I must look to other species of Euphorbia.—
I remain | Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin
P.S. | I remember telling you about Wiesners vivisection of me, & I was pleased yesterday by receiving a letter from Pfeffer, who has been retrying some of my experiments & differs from Wiesner.4 But Pfeffer differs vehemently on other points from me; so I am in fine hot water.
Footnotes
Bibliography
Bary, Anton de. 1877. Vergleichende Anatomie der Vegetationsorgane der Phanerogamen und Farne. Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann.
Wiesner, Julius. 1881. Das Bewegungsvermögen der Pflanzen. Eine kritische Studie über das gleichnamige Werk von Charles Darwin nebst neuen Untersuchungen. Vienna: Alfred Hölder.
Summary
More observations of the radicles of germinating seeds of Euphorbia peplus for appearance of milk-tubes.
Comments on J. v. Wiesner’s and W. F. P. Pfeffer’s views and criticism of his experiments.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-13486A
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- Sydney Howard Vines
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- DAR 185: 77
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 13486A,” accessed on 23 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-13486A.xml