Summary

Thanks EWL for his book about hydropathy [Old medicine and new (1873)].

Summary

Sends sodium carbonate for Drosera experiments. Will try to determine what the solvent is.

Summary

Had thrown Geographical Society’s Proceedings in waste-basket, but as Strachey shows such admirable powers of discrimination he will fish it out and read the whole article.

Comments on 3d ed. of Sachs’s work [Lehrbuch der Botanik (1873)]. Wishes he were more controversial.

Has become wonderfully interested in Drosera and Dionaea.

9000 copies of Expression have been printed and most are sold.

Summary

Describes his recent work on Drosera digestion of organic materials, e.g., albumen and gelatin. Edward Frankland has given CD a rough test for pepsin. Some plant extracts cause as much inflection as meat. Has found some reversible inflection with heat and perhaps some heat rigor. Has measured the extreme sensitivity of Drosera with very dilute solution of ammonium phosphate.

Summary

Thinks THF has solved the mystery of Coronilla.

Summary

The Drosophyllum goes to Orpington by train this evening.

Summary

Sends table showing relative force of impact of weight dropped on a plane inclined at different angles.

Summary

Frankland is sending JSBS organic acids for him to try artificial digestion. CD will send globulin and haemoglobin.

Summary

He will repeat the experiments in which CD found that formic acid vapour killed seeds [see 8866]. John Lindley describes effects of other acids on germination.

He has tabulated the large amount of variation in English Ophrys apifera.

Summary

Fritz Müller is now working on the Brazilian honey-bees (Melipona and Trigona).

HM thanks CD for fertilisation references.

Summary

Asks GHD whether he can tell him what inclination a polished or waxy leaf ought to hold to the horizon in order to let vertical rain rebound off as much as possible.

Summary

Further observations concerning the fertilisation of Coronilla by bees.

Reflections concerning the influence of cultivation (i.e., ploughing) upon variation.

Summary

Had read Tyndall’s letter [Nature 8 (1873): 399] – awfully savage, but certainly a great mistake to print it.

Thinks JDH will think better of Clerk Maxwell’s paper after he reads it.

Asks whether JDH could find out for him the temperature of rain in very hot countries.

Summary

Mimosa too far gone to send now.

CD’s marjoram is the common [Origanum] vulgare, not the pot herb.

On the water injury, Thiselton-Dyer and he may have used too fine a spray, but plant is insensitive.

Horribly angry at P. G. Tait’s letter in Nature [8 (1873): 381–2].

Tyndall writes that he is strong – the next number of Nature will prove it.

G. Henslow is much better.

JDH leaves for Bradford [BAAS meeting] tomorrow.

Rejoices at CD’s success with Drosera; longs to be at Nepenthes.

Summary

Asks whether the Litchfields may call on her. "My wife complains that she has been very badly treated and that I ought to have asked permission for her to call on you with me when we next come to London: but I tell her that I still have some shreds of modesty."

Summary

Has found Lathyrus maritima on the cliffs near Barmouth.

Summary

Sends paper to be published in Sydney Mail on primitive man.

Sends lists of earth [castings] made by worms [see Earthworms, p. 127],

and a catalogue of Australian Lepidoptera.

Summary

Further details on inheritance of an eyelid abnormality.

Summary

The results of EF’s tests for acids in the secretion of Drosera are largely negative [see Insectivorous plants, p. 88].

Summary

Sends corrections of Descent and Expression.