To W. T. Thiselton-Dyer   30 August [1878]1

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

Aug. 30th (noon)

My dear Dyer

It is extraordinarily kind in you & all at Kew to be willing to entrust so precious a plant with us. But I fear to handle it & therefore telegraphed to you too late.—2 For tracing exact course which a root follows in moving to light, I do not see how we could possibly manage it, as it seems that the plant wd. have to be kept hot & damp & near the light to continue healthy. Therefore I will despatch it, without moving it in its case, this day about 2o, marking it to be forwarded immediately by rail. Once again I thank you most heartily. (We have damped a bundle of moss & fastened within case to keep in dampish.)

The Bignonias also are very valuable & shall hereafter be returned.3 My one plant behaved very badly yesterday, & perhaps I shall prove altogether wrong; but is is a greater advantage to prove oneself wrong even than to find out a new fact. Good Heavens what pit-falls & traps there are in experimental work.—

A few days ago I shd have thought the Atriplex a curious little case, but now it may prove invaluable, as Frank is working on relation of stomata to bloom, & it was for this very purpose that we wanted so badly Trifolium resupinatum, the seeds of which I think are now germinating—4

Yours gratefully | C. Darwin

1
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter to W. T. Thiselton-Dyer, 24 August [1878].
2
The plant has not been identified, but was evidently a species of orchid (see letter to W. T. Thiselton-Dyer, 31 August [1878]).
3
CD had received plants of Bignonia capreolata (crossvine) from Kew and had tried to obtain more from the Veitch nursery, but they were unable to supply any (see letter to W. T. Thiselton-Dyer, 24 August [1878] and n. 5).
4
Joseph Dalton Hooker sent CD plants of Atriplex (the genus of saltbush) in 1877 (Correspondence vol. 25, letter from J. D. Hooker, 31 May 1877). CD had received seeds of Trifolium resupinatum (Persian clover) from Kew (see letter to W. T. Thiselton-Dyer, 24 August [1878]). CD and Francis Darwin had been investigating the function of bloom on leaves (see letter to Francis Darwin, [17 August 1878]). Francis later noted that he had been asked to investigate the relation between bloom and the location of stomata, or breathing pores, of leaves (F. Darwin 1886, p. 99).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.4 it seems that] interl
1.5 will] above del ‘have’
1.5 despatch] altered from ‘despatched’
1.6 immediately] after del ‘I’
1.7 (We … dampish.) 1.8] added; square brackets in ms
2.1 also] interl
3.3 very purpose] interl

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-11680,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-11680