Has told publisher to send a copy of Insectivorous plants.
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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.
Has told publisher to send a copy of Insectivorous plants.
Thanks MTM for his excellent review [of Insectivorous plants]
and for his trouble about the gooseberry.
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.]
In response to CD’s query, answers that he has frequently heard discussions at the Horticultural Society of a saccharine secretion from leaves of the lime and has no doubt it really does occur. [See Cross and self-fertilisation, p. 402.]
Discusses views of [Alexander James] Maule on potatoes.
Discusses graft-hybrids.
Sends the name of a plant: Cotyledon stolonifera.
Reports on the flowering and growth of a branch of Echeveria stolonifera.
Praise for Movement in plants.
He thinks G. A. Chatin, whom CD quotes [p. 389], is mistaken about movement of conifer leaves. Cites his own paper ["Relations between morphology and physiology in the leaves of certain conifers", J. Linn. Soc. Lond. (Bot.) 17 (1880): 547–52].
Thanks for note. CD had had misgivings about Chatin but had assumed he was trustworthy [see Movement in plants, p. 389].
Much interested in MTM’s lecture at Royal Institution ["On the relation between the abnormal and normal formations in plants", Notes Proc. R. Inst. G. B. 3 (1860): 223–7].
Asks for information about crossing of varieties of peas. Describes his own experimental results: "the offspring out of the same pod, instead of being intermediate, was very nearly like the two pure parents; yet in one, there was a trace of the cross & the next generation showed still more plainly their mongrel origins".
Discusses crosses in sweetpeas and the difference between monstrosities and slight variations. Discusses peloric flowers.
Thanks for correction about furze.
Obliged for MTM’s ["Vegetable morphology", Br. & Foreign Med.-Chir. Rev. 29 (1862): 202–18].
He has only an uncertain memory of the placement of stamens in the [monstrous?] primrose CD asked about.
Thanks for Orchids.
CD has been experimenting on the fertility of peloric flowers, with the forlorn hope of illustrating sterility of hybrids; seeks further plants or seeds.
Will be sending information on peloric plants from his father [William Masters] soon.
CD grateful to have had the distinction of the two sorts of peloria pointed out to him.
His very sick son rallied; is out of danger, thanks to port wine.
Comments on MTM’s article ["On the existence of two forms of peloria", Nat. Hist. Rev. n.s. 3 (1863): 258–62]. Cites interesting case of peloric flower.
Sends two spikes of Corydalis.
Admits he may have drawn false inference from MTM’s division of peloria into two classes.
Thanks CD for specimens which show that an abnormality in one genus is normal in another, which bears on CD’s views on descent.