Ɛpsilon

To D. F. Nevill   15 January 1877

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

Jan 15— 1877

Dear Lady Dorothy Nevill

I am much obliged for all the trouble which you have so kindly taken.— One of your references relates to the Apocyneæ catching Lepidoptera, & this is the most gratuitous case of cruelty known to me in a state of nature, for apparently such captures are of no use to the plant & assuredly not to the wretched butterfly or moth or fly.—1

Your Ladyship’s | Truly obliged | Ch. Darwin

1
No letter from Nevill with botanical references has been identified. In a letter to Thomas Brittain of 1 December 1876 (Correspondence vol. 24), CD mentioned that he had a plant of Apocynum androsaemifolium (fly-trap dogbane) in his hothouse and hoped to work out the reason for its ‘trap-like arrangement’ if it flowered. The V-shaped nectaries of the flower trap small flies and moths by their proboscises, while their proper pollinators, long-tongued butterflies, are able to avoid the trap.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-10789,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-10789