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Gardeners’ Chronicle in correspondent 
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From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Gardeners’ Chronicle
Date:
[16 Aug 1841]
Source of text:
Gardeners’ Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette no. 34, 21 August 1841, p. 550
Summary:

Reports detailed observations on humble-bees boring holes in flowers to extract nectar instead of brushing over the stamens and pistils. Some hive-bees seem to use the holes made by the humble-bees; speculates that this would be a case of acquired knowledge in insects.

Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Gardeners’ Chronicle
Date:
[late Aug 1843]
Source of text:
Gardeners’ Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette , no. 36, 9 September 1843, p. 628
Summary:

Sends some examples of Gentiana that he thinks may shed light on the origin of double flowers. Since specimens grew in sterile soil their double flowering cannot be attributed to excess food. CD advances the hypothesis that some change in natural conditions causes sterility, which then causes compensatory development of petals, the organs closest in morphology to those whose functions have been checked.

Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Gardeners’ Chronicle
Date:
[27 Mar 1844]
Source of text:
Gardeners’ Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette , no. 14, 6 April 1844, p. 218
Summary:

Writes to correct a statement made in his 1837 paper "On the formation of mould" [Collected papers 1: 49–53]. He should have said that marl was put on the field 30 years ago, not 80. Observations made on a visit to the field showed that worms had undermined the marl spread on the field at a faster rate than previously reported.

Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Gardeners’ Chronicle
Date:
[before 8 June 1844]
Source of text:
Gardeners’ Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette , no. 23, 8 June 1844, p. 380
Summary:

Sends a quotation from de Vallemont’s Curiosities of nature and art in husbandry and gardening (1707) showing that the value of saltpetre in manure and the advantage of steeping seeds in specially prepared liquid manure were well known at the time.

Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Gardeners’ Chronicle
Date:
[before 14 Sept 1844]
Source of text:
Gardeners’ Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette , no. 37, 14 September 1844, pp. 621
Summary:

Referring to a correspondent who had written about Pelargonium plants whose leaves had become regularly edged with white, CD reports that nearly all the young leaves of box-trees he had planted have become symmetrically tipped with white. Though these facts seem trivial, CD believes the first appearance of any peculiarity which tends to become hereditary deserves being recorded.

Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Gardeners’ Chronicle
Date:
[before 14 Sept 1844]
Source of text:
Gardeners’ Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette , no. 37, 14 September 1844, pp. 628–9
Summary:

Asks whether salt and carbonate of lime (in the form of seashells) would act upon each other if slightly moistened and left in great quantities together. The question occurs from CD’s having found in Peru a great bed of recent shells that were mixed with salt, decayed and corroded "in a singular manner". Mentions, as relevant to the value of seashells as manure, that they are dissolved more rapidly by water than any other form of carbonate of lime.

Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Gardeners’ Chronicle
Date:
[before 23 Nov 1844]
Source of text:
Gardeners’ Chronicle , 23 November 1844, p. 779
Summary:

Considers the transmutation of corn is well worth investigation ‘even if it should prove to be only a history of error’.

Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Gardeners’ Chronicle
Date:
[before 6 Mar 1847]
Source of text:
Gardeners’ Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette , no. 10, 6 March 1847, pp. 157–8
Summary:

Corrects a misunderstanding of his description of salt deposits [in South America, pp. 74–5]. The salt referred to was from Rio Negro, and was coarsely crystallised and free of other saline substances found in sea-salt. CD believes its lesser value in curing meat is owing to the absence of muriates of lime and magnesia and suggests that it might be worth while to add them to the Rio Negro salt.

Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Gardeners’ Chronicle
Date:
13 July [1848]
Source of text:
Gardeners’ Chronicle , 22 July 1848, p. 491
Summary:

Reports on the effect of potato blight in his crop.

Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Gardeners’ Chronicle
Date:
[before 10 Jan 1852]
Source of text:
Gardeners’ Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette , no. 2, 10 January 1852, p. 22
Summary:

Asks readers of Gardeners’ Chronicle whether they have experience with light wire rope instead of chain in drawing water buckets from deep wells. Describes the problem of his own well with its 325 foot chain.

Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Gardeners’ Chronicle
Date:
[c. 27 Apr 1853]
Source of text:
Gardeners’ Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette , no. 19, 7 May 1853, p. 302
Summary:

Solicits information about the kind of syphon required to convey water from a proposed large water tank to existing smaller ones.

Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Gardeners’ Chronicle
Date:
11 Apr [1855]
Source of text:
Gardeners’ Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette , no. 15, 14 April 1855, p. 242
Summary:

CD describes his experiments on the effects on germination of the immersion of seeds in sea-water. Hopes to throw light on the distribution of plants. Asks readers of Gardeners’ Chronicle to inform him whether such experiments have already been tried and what class or species of seeds they suppose would be particularly liable to be killed by sea-water.

Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Gardeners’ Chronicle
Date:
21 May [1855]
Source of text:
Gardeners’ Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette , no. 21, 26 May 1855, pp. 356–7
Summary:

Reports on his experiments on action of sea-water on seeds and the bearing of his investigations on the theory of centres of creation and Edward Forbes’s theory of continental extensions to account for distribution of organic forms. CD’s experiments confirm germination powers were retained after 42 days’ immersion by seven out of eight kinds of seeds.

Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Gardeners’ Chronicle
Date:
[before 26 May 1855]
Source of text:
Gardeners’ Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette , no. 21, 26 May 1855, p. 360
Summary:

Will be obliged if any reader can provide eggs of lizard Lacerta agilis. Wants to ascertain whether they float in sea-water. Offers reward of a few shillings to boys for collecting.

Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Gardeners’ Chronicle
Date:
[before 21 July 1855]
Source of text:
Gardeners’ Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette , no. 29, 21 July 1855, p. 487
Summary:

Reports on observing hive-bees visiting the leaves of vetch and bean and sucking the minute drops of nectar secreted by the glands on the underside of the stipulae. This phenomenon proves wrong those botanists who believe nectar to be a special secretion for the sole purpose of luring insects to visit flowers and thus to aid in their fertilisation.

Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Gardeners’ Chronicle
Date:
[before 3 Nov 1855]
Source of text:
Gardeners’ Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette , no. 44, 3 November 1855, p. 726
Summary:

CD requests further details about a rain of shells on the Isle of Wight reported by a Gardeners’ Chronicle correspondent.

Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Gardeners’ Chronicle
Date:
13 Nov [1855]
Source of text:
Gardeners’ Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette , no. 46, 17 November 1855, p. 758
Summary:

Reports a case of charlock seeds that retained their vitality for at least eight or nine years. He suggests that their power of retaining vitality when buried in damp soil may be an element in preserving the species and therefore seeds may be specially endowed with this capacity, while the power of retaining vitality in dry, artificial conditions may be an indirect accidental quality of little or no use to the species.

Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Gardeners’ Chronicle
Date:
21 Nov [1855]
Source of text:
Gardeners’ Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette , no. 47, 24 November 1855, p. 773
Summary:

Sends final results of his experiments on the vitality of various kinds of seeds immersed in sea-water. Corrects a false assumption he made in an earlier letter [1684] that plants with ripe seeds would float for some weeks. Now finds that they sink within a month. Since all the seeds he tried sank in sea-water, his experiments are of little or no use "in regard to the distribution of plants by drifting of their seeds across the sea".

Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Gardeners’ Chronicle
Date:
[before 1 Dec 1855]
Source of text:
Gardeners’ Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette , no. 48, 1 December 1855, p. 789
Summary:

Corrects a misprint in his letter [1783].

Adds that his experiments show that one cannot infer from the vitality of seeds under dry conditions that they will be preserved in different conditions. Cites the poor ability of Leguminosae to withstand immersion.

Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Gardeners’ Chronicle
Date:
[before 29 Dec 1855]
Source of text:
Gardeners’ Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette , no. 52, 29 December 1855, p. 854
Summary:

Cites [from Gärtner’s Bastarderzeugung (1849), p. 157] a report that seeds from graves of ancient Gauls germinated.

Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project