To Francis Darwin   3 June [1879]1

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

June 3d.

My dear Frank.

We were extremely glad to get your letter, which shows us your life.2 I write chiefly as a memorandum: when time allows remember I want much to know whether there is chlorophyll in the cots. of the Canary grass (Phalaris) & Oat. Also remember to learn about cutting thin sections of soft leaves &c.— Lastly the instrument for making marks at equal distances on stems &c.—3

I have been working very hard at circumnutation of leaves (& all hitherto tried thus behave), but more especially on sleeping plants to see by tracing movement on vertical glass how clearly the sleep movement is exaggerated circumnutation.— I have got one fine case with Erythrina, in which the leaf is incessantly going up & down, all day & in the evening merely increases a movement of exactly the same kind & then nutates at night at its lower level.—4

Drosera circumnutates well, but C. of Ammonia, does not produce any marked difference.—5

The Teazles look magnificent in the orchard, & I hope next year you will grapple with the subject again, for I am sure that it is worth it.—6

Bernard7 has been very charming: today he has been gabbling all the words he knows into a confused mess together, as quick as he could gabble them.—

I am now waiting for that confounded club on the lawn,8 & yesterday we had a bothering photographer, but Leonard, who was here all day, saved me much bother.9 Lady L. is going to write another life of me for the University Mag.!10 She must be mad.—

Ever yours my dear old fellow | C. Darwin

1
The year is established by the reference to the meeting of the Down Friendly Society (see n. 8, below).
3
Francis was working in Julius Sachs’s laboratory at the Botanical Institute in Würzburg, Germany (see letter from Francis Darwin, 29 May 1879). CD was trying to establish whether the bending in cotyledons of canary grass (Phalaris canariensis) and oats (Avena sativa) was due to their movement towards light. Sachs had invented the self-registering auxanometer between 1869 and 1870 and described and illustrated it in an article on the influence of temperature and light on hourly and daily changes in the length of internodes (Sachs 1872b, pp. 112–13).
4
Richard Irwin Lynch had observed the sleep of Erythrina crista-galli (the cockspur coral tree) for CD; see Correspondence vol. 25, letter from R. I. Lynch, [28 August 1877]. CD’s experimental notes, dated 7 to 10 June 1878, on five species of Erythrina are in DAR 209.2: 27–37; see also Movement in plants, pp. 366–7.
5
CD’s experimental notes, dated 7 to 9 June 1878, on the circumnutation of Drosera rotundifolia (common or round-leaved sundew), including the effects of applying carbonate of ammonia, are in DAR 209.3: 173–8; see also Movement in plants, pp. 237–9.
6
In 1877, Francis had published his research on the protoplasmic filaments of the common teasel (Dipsacus sylvestris); see F. Darwin 1877a and 1877b.
7
Francis’s baby son, Bernard Darwin.
8
CD was treasurer of the Down Friendly Society. Its annual general meeting was held on the lawn in front of Down House on Whit Tuesday (Rules of the Down Friendly Society, National Archives, FS1/232), which in 1879 was 3 June.
9
The photographer has not been identified but was likely to have been taking photographs of CD’s plant experiments. Leonard Darwin was also taking photographs of plants for CD; see, for instance, Correspondence vol. 26, letter from Leonard Darwin, 25 April 1878.
10
In 1878, Ellen Frances Lubbock had written a piece on CD for a contemporary portraits series for the University Magazine ([E. F. Lubbock] 1878); see Correspondence vol. 26, letter to E. F. Lubbock, 18 July [1878]. No later article on CD by Lubbock has been found; she died in October 1879.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.5 on] altered from ‘.—’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-11541,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-11541