Summary

Further discussion of the introduction of a bill by Lyon Playfair on animal experimentation.

Summary

Further discussion about the act regulating animal experimentation; believes the licensing of places to be impracticable.

Summary

Answers CD’s questions of 25 July [8987] about temperatures at which cold-blooded animals are killed.

Doubts heat rigor was induced in Drosera. Gives his view of the relation of excitability to increase in temperature.

Suggests experiment to show that electrical changes in plant are the same as in animal muscle and nerve [see Insectivorous plants, p. 318].

Summary

Lyon Playfair approves the bill concerning animal experimentation and would be prepared to introduce it should it be necessary. Believes a bill could be passed by Parliament by September.

Summary

Sends cartilage from cat’s ear, the elastic fibres of which will probably resist digestion [by Drosera]. Is preparing fibro-cartilage, which he expects will be digested easily. [See Insectivorous plants, p. 104.]

Summary

Sends results of experiments on digestion. Encloses two sets of notes: "Experiments on the digestibility of certain preparations sent by Mr Darwin" and "Note for Mr Darwin" [marked by CD for insertion in ch. 6 of Insectivorous plants].

Summary

Signs a certificate sent to him by CD [see 12954].

Sends CD a ticket to his lecture on 25 February, in which he will propose that the mode by which the excitable parts of plants influence other parts at a distance is essentially the same as in the excitable structure of animals, contrary to the views of Hermann Munk and Julius Sachs.

Interested in chapters 6 and 7 of Movement in plants.

Summary

Informs CD of the effects of certain salts and other chemicals on animals.

Comments on CD’s results with Drosera. Suggests some experiments.

Summary

Purpose of experiments was to determine digestive activity of liquids containing pepsin. Gives required amounts of hydrochloric, propionic, butyric and valerianic acids. Describes experiment and gives results. Also experimented on digestive activity of butyric acid at greater temperatures than the termperature of the body.

Summary

Describes his work on Nepenthes.

Cephalotus is a beast.

His address is a history of Dionaea, Sarracenia, and Drosera.

Thiselton-Dyer has helped enormously except with the observations; but his health is so poor that JDH thinks he is "evidently cut out for a Literate not a working botanist".

Summary

FD has asked J. B. Sanderson about Mucin.

Summary

Encloses draft bill about vivisection; CD and friends may have influence enough to get it introduced in Commons or Lords; TA and the Cruelty Society do not. The Society, however, can pay for preparation of bill.

Summary

Sends his thoughts on [vivisection] petition. Thinks they might make petition more talked about. Leaves it to J. Paget, Burdon Sanderson, and CD to deal with.

Summary

Reports on his examination of the effects of Drosera secretion on tooth enamel and dentine, and of artificial gastric juice on fibrous basis of bone.

Summary

Playfair "disgusted at our pronunciamentos against the Bill". Burdon Sanderson and William Sharpey agreed to it. THH feels he must serve on Vivisection Commission.

Summary

Stupefied by CD’s trouble and kindness. All he wanted for Belfast meeting was assurance that mention of published work on Drosera, etc., in Nature, etc., would not interfere with CD’s book.

Would like his Nepenthes results to go to CD or to Royal Society, but prefers CD take them.

Cephalotus very puzzling.

Peas and cabbage grow twice as fast after two days’ immersion in Nepenthes as when placed in distilled water, but four days’ immersion seems to kill them.

Has a splendid Australian Drosera twice as big as D. rotundifolia.

Summary

Supports the Vivisection Bill, with a more humanitarian preamble. Working to get it through the House of Lords.

Summary

The Vivisection Bill was defeated because it was repudiated by one of its own fathers: J. S. Burdon Sanderson.

Summary

Lyon Playfair’s bill [on vivisection] is unacceptable to all teachers of physiology. It prohibits dissections for demonstrations to students. He will have to repudiate it. Asks CD’s advice.

Summary

Forwards a letter reporting on a blow-fly trapped by a leaf of Dionaea; decomposition of fly has also decomposed the leaf. JDH has written asking for a strong plant, and explaining the case [of surfeit].