Provides CD with a method of obtaining a numerical ratio that expresses the superiority in heights of crossed plants to self-fertilised plants.
Provides CD with a method of obtaining a numerical ratio that expresses the superiority in heights of crossed plants to self-fertilised plants.
Accepts WR’s offer of copies of the Garden for the next half-year.
He has confuted Descent.
Enclosures announce his cures of potato blight, epilepsy, etc.
Has confirmed CD’s observations on Drosera.
Asks whether CD agrees that it is "no longer a fact" that the bladders of Utricularia vulgaris enable the plant to become lighter for fecundation and heavier when that act is accomplished. Plans to undertake further observations, under very high-powered microscopes, of mechanism of digestion.
Bug on Tilia, cited in Variation, was Cimex apterus.
CD has read all of WHD’s and J. J. Drysdale’s papers [on spontaneous generation, monads, and the origin of life] and finds them the best work on the subject.
The function of bladders in Utricularia is not to float the plant.
Two photographs of T. W. Clarke, Jr, aged three, offered as examples of expression.
Sends copy of Arabische Korallen [1876].
Comments on reception of his paper on "Gastrula" [see 10012].
Thanks FG for his report [on the statistical validity of CD’s experiments; see Cross and self-fertilisation, pp. 16–18]. Discusses FG’s comments, his own experiments, and the means by which the results may be analysed.
Has sent his paper on Echinoidea [see 10373] as a token of his veneration. He tried to address the confusion in knowledge about the different parts of the exoskeleton of the Echinodermata by tracing certain relations of homology not previously noticed. Much more work is required.
Thanks EH for Arabische Korallen [1876].
Reports on the tendency of the normally fruitless Convolvulus arvensis, to form fruit when roots are cut and plant is in danger of dying.
Reports an observation on his child’s behaviour;
claims to have captured two moths of different species in the act of copulating with each other.
Proposes an unorthodox theory of generation that explains sex determination and atavism.
Thanks WED for his letter of 20 December 1875. Is surprised and delighted by the support from WED and CD for the Index.
EH’s Arabische Korallen is spirited, clear, and poetical. With respect to formation of islands, thinks EH lays too much stress on views of Ehrenberg. Admires drawings.
Thanks for KHvS’s book [La province de Smyrne (1873)].
Discusses possible meeting.
Are plants that arise from vegetative propagation individuals or merely parts of the original parent plant?
He is surveying the literature on the struggle for existence among pasture plants. Asks CD for the "many cases on record" of changed relations among plants under slightly changed conditions alluded to in the Origin. [See M. T. Masters, J. B. Lawes and J. M. Gilbert "Agricultural, botanical, and chemical results of experiments on the mixed herbage of permanent meadow, conducted for more than twenty years in succession on the same land (pt 2, The botanical results)", Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. 173 (1883): 1181–413.]
Purchases cigarettes for CD.