To Francis Darwin   [c. 23 June 1878]1

My dear F.

I can send (packed in damp rag & surrounded by oil-silk) a twisted piece of Aristolochia sipho, of so-called Azorean Honeysuckle, & of common Honeysuckle.— Dependent branches of Scarlet Runn K. Bean become well twisted.— Give the order & they shall be sent.— I despatch to day Nature.—2 It is grand about Sachs “die merkwurdigste” &c &c3 Bless his soul. Bernard will turn into a Railway Engineer so absorbed is with booboos.—4

Dear old Backy | goodbye | C. D.

Prof. E. Tangl has send you a thickish pamphlet “Das Protoplasma der Erbse”5

Probably good— Shall I send it

1
The date is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter to W. T. Thiselton-Dyer, 23 June [1878].
2
Aristolochia sipho is Dutchman’s pipe; ‘so-called Azorean Honeysuckle’ is Bignonia capensis (a synonym of Tecoma capensis, Cape honeysuckle); common honeysuckle is Lonicera periclymenum; the scarlet runner-bean is Phaseolus multiflorus (a synonym of P. coccineus); the kidney bean is Phaseolus vulgaris. CD sent the weekly issues of the journal Nature regularly while Francis was in Würzburg (see letter to Francis Darwin, 7 [July 1878] and n. 5).
3
Francis Darwin had shown Julius Sachs his discovery of protoplasmic filaments on the common teasel (Dipsacus sylvestris), and Sachs had exclaimed, ‘Die merkwürdigsten Dinge’ (The most remarkable things; German); see letter to W. T. Thiselton-Dyer, 23 June [1878] and n. 4.
4
Francis’s baby son, Bernard Darwin; see letter to G. J. Romanes, 16 June [1878] and n. 3.
5
A copy of Eduard Tangl’s two-part essay Das Protoplasma der Erbse (The protoplasm of the pea; Tangl 1877–8) is in the Darwin Pamphlet Collection–CUL, marked ‘For Francis Darwin with compliments of the author’.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.1 twisted] after del ‘pi’
1.2 & of] interl
1.3 Dependent] interl above del ‘Stray’
1.3 Give] over ‘I’
1.3 the] over ‘de’
3.1 Prof.… it 4.1] pencil

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-11564,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-11564