Ɛpsilon

From G. J. Romanes   20 July 1875

Dunskaith, Nigg P.O., Ross-shire, N.B.:

July 20, 1875.

My dear Mr. Darwin,

Your letter arrived just in time to prevent my sending an order to my bookseller for ‘Insectivorous Plants,’ for, of course, it is needless to say that I shall highly value a copy from yourself.1 At first I intended to wait until I should have more time to enjoy the work, but a passage in this week’s ‘Nature’ determined me to get a copy at once. This passage was one about reflex action,2 and I am very anxious to see what you say about this, because in a paper I have prepared for the ‘B.A.’ on Medusæ I have had occasion to insist upon the occurrence of reflex action in the case of these, notwithstanding the absence of any distinguishable system of afferent and efferent nerves.3 But as physiologists have been so long accustomed to associate the phenomena of reflex action with some such distinguishable system, I was afraid that they might think me rather audacious in propounding the doctrine, that there is such a thing as reflex action without well-defined structural channels for it to occur in.4 But if you have found something of the same sort in plants, of course I shall be very glad to have your authority to quote. And I think it follows deductively from the general theory of evolution, that reflex action ought to be present before the lines in which it flows are sufficiently differentiated to become distinguishable as nerves.

I am very glad that you are pleased with my progress so far.

2
A review of Insectivorous plants in Nature, 15 July 1875, p. 209, discussed CD’s account of the transmission of motor impulse through the cellular tissue in leaves of Drosera (sundew) as ‘partaking of the nature of those actions which in the nervous system of animals are called reflex’.
3
There is no mention of a paper by Romanes in the Report of the 45th Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1875); however, he gave a paper at the following year’s meeting (see Report of the 46th Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1876), Transactions of the sections, pp. 158–63).
4
In papers read before the Royal Institution of Great Britain and the Royal Society of London, Romanes argued that the excitable tissue of medusae responded to stimuli in a similar way to the nervo-muscular tissue of higher animals, and that medusae possessed rudimentary nerves (G. J. Romanes 1875b and G. J. Romanes 1876, pp. 170–4).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-10081,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-10081