To Lawson Tait   15 August [1875]1

Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.

Aug. 15th

My dear Sir

I must write one line to thank you cordially for your kind Review in the Spectator, which is most honourable to me & more than I deserve. You have, also, pleased me very much by your notice of my son Francis.—2 You will think me extra sceptical, but I cannot understand how the virgin pitchers of Nepenthes can have contained your droserine, seeing that the fluid was acid, at least in one case, & yet did not digest.3

My dear Sir | Yours sincerely | Ch. Darwin

I have been working so hard at new Edits, of old Books that I have had no time to think of anything else,, & have done too much, & must leave home for a little rest.—4

1
The year is established by the reference to Tait’s review of Insectivorous plants (see n. 2, below).
2
In his unsigned review of Insectivorous plants in the Spectator, 14 August 1875, Tait credited Francis Darwin, who promised to be a ‘worthy son of a noble father’, with making valuable contributions to the work (ibid., p.1037). See also letter from Lawson Tait, 15 July [1875] and n. 3.
3
In his paper in Nature, 29 July 1875, pp. 251–2, Tait proposed the name ‘droserine’ (‘droserin’ elsewhere) for a digestive substance he believed he had isolated from the secretions of insectivorous plants, and reported on experiments carried out at CD’s suggestion on unopened tropical pitcher-plants (Nepenthes). See also letter from Lawson Tait, 15 July [1875] and n. 5, and letter to Lawson Tait, 20 July [1875].
4
CD had been working on the second editions of both Variation and Climbing plants; he stayed at the home of William Erasmus Darwin in Southampton from 28 August to 11 September 1875 (CD’s ‘Journal’ (Appendix II)).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

3.1 of old Books] interl

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-10177F,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-10177F