To J. D. Hooker   [26 October 1877]1

6. Queen Anne St.

Friday

My dear Hooker

I am very very sorry to trouble you so soon, but you can pass my request on Mr Lynch, who has already sent me seeds.—2 I want badly a few seeds of Mimosa pudica, & if possible of Desmodium gyrans & of any Cassia.— We want to watch the cotyledons of these plants. From what Frank & I have seen, I think we shall be able to show that all the automatic movements of mature plants are developments of the wonderful automatic movements of the stem & cotyledons of all the plants which we have as yet observed.—3

I have just read the nice little sketch of you in Nature & your own paper.—4

We go home on Monday & have come here for 3 days, as I wanted rest,—the cotyledons having worn me out.—5

Yours affecy | C. Darwin

1
The date is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter to W. T. Thiselton-Dyer, 11 October [1877], and by CD’s reference to staying at 6 Queen Anne Street (see n. 5, below). In 1877, 26 October was a Friday.
2
The seeds sent by Richard Irwin Lynch had arrived on 10 October (see letter to W. T. Thiselton-Dyer, 11 October [1877] and nn. 2 and 3).
3
The movements of the cotyledons of Mimosa pudica, Desmodium gyrans, and Cassia observed by CD and Francis Darwin were described in Movement in plants, pp. 37, 357–64, 369–73.
4
The issue of Nature for 25 October 1877 contained a biographical sketch of Hooker by Asa Gray (A. Gray 1877a), and an article by Hooker on the botany of the Rocky Mountains (J. D. Hooker 1877).
5
CD stayed at 6 Queen Anne Street, the home of Erasmus Alvey Darwin, from 26 to 29 October 1877; he had been working on cotyledons and the movement of plants since July (CD’s ‘Journal’ (Appendix II)).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

0.1 6. … St.] before del ‘Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station | Orpington S.E.R.’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-11210,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-11210