Discusses his health following a visit to Dr C[lark?]. Has made an appointment for CD.
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The Charles Darwin Collection
The Darwin Correspondence Project is publishing letters written by and to the naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882). Complete transcripts of letters are being made available through the Project’s website (www.darwinproject.ac.uk) after publication in the ongoing print edition of The Correspondence of Charles Darwin (Cambridge University Press 1985–). Metadata and summaries of all known letters (c. 15,000) appear in Ɛpsilon, and the full texts of available letters can also be searched, with links to the full texts.
Discusses his health following a visit to Dr C[lark?]. Has made an appointment for CD.
Sends table showing relative force of impact of weight dropped on a plane inclined at different angles.
Has heard that Mr Allen wishes to let his house and thinks it probable that it would suit his son [Francis]. Asks whether he may have refusal of it.
Thanks KM for gift of his "great work on Capital" [2d German ed. of Das Kapital]. Wishes he understood more of "the deep & important subject of political Economy".
Hears from Frank [Darwin] that Drosera behaves perversely. Suggests that motor influence may move longitudinally away from the excited glands.
Information for CD’s use in investigating digestion by Drosera.
Sends tracing of ancient Egyptian illustration of dogs and cattle.
Sends CD a draft of a letter to Nature [see 9087], which he thinks expresses CD’s meaning.
CD thinks GHD’s letter is an excellent clarification [of CD’s conjectural view on the elimination of useless parts in species], but does not want to publish it as his [CD’s] own. Asks GHD to think carefully before he publishes it.
Sends formula for pure pepsin for experiments on digestion of Drosera, and information on legumin. Will send chlorophyll soon.
Has decided to send the letter ["Variation of organs", Nature 8 (1873): 505].
Writes of his poor health and problems of settling in at Trinity.
Mimosa prostrata, described by John Lindley as M. marginata, native of Brazil.
Who supplies CD with distilled water and chemicals?
Thanks CD for copies of his books.
Sends chlorophyll extract [for CD’s work on Drosera digestion].
Requests a piece of the most sensitive litmus paper in order to test the secretions of minute hairs of plants which catch minute flies. [See 9098.]
On CD’s paper ["Complemental males of certain cirripedes", Collected papers 2: 177–82].
Comments on paper by W. H. Dallinger and J. J. Drysdale ["Life history of a Cercomonad", Mon. Microsc. J. 10 (1873): 53–8].
Discusses origin of life, the Gastraea theory and concept that primary germ layers are homologous in all animals. Notes similar views of E. Ray Lankester ["On the primitive cell-layers of the embryo", Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 4th ser. 11 (1873): 321–38].
Reception of Darwinism in Germany.
Thanks AB for his review of Expression [May 1873, in The senses and the intellect, 3d ed. (1874), pp. 697–714]. Admits vagueness of some points. Has never grasped AB’s principle of spontaneity. But, as they look at everything so differently, it is not likely that they should agree closely.
A recent review by T. S. Baynes, [Edinburgh Rev. 137 (1873): 492–528] is "magnificently contemptuous" toward CD and many others.
Has not seen number of Botanical Bulletin with account of Apocynum.
The results of EF’s tests for acids in the secretion of Drosera are largely negative [see Insectivorous plants, p. 88].
Asks for details about microscope parts.
Wants FD to ask Hooker for species of Desmodium; CD believes he has found new movements.
Also ask whether Hooker has Drosophyllum.
Has got a cold, so will not go to Kew. Wrote to Hartnack about price of microscopes and describes own model. Told Hooker about Tisley Spiller’s microscope in Paris.