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To Eduard Strasburger   4 October 1878

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

Oct. 4th. 1878

Dear Sir

I must have the pleasure of thanking you for your kindness in having sent me your essay “on swarm-spores &c”, which I have just finished reading with great interest & admiration.1

I have been all the more interested as I have lately been making a few observations on ordinary heliotropic plants, although (as you remark) your case is very different.—2

With great respect, I remain | Dear Sir | Yours faithfully & obliged | Charles Darwin

1
CD’s heavily annotated offprint of Strasburger’s paper ‘Wirkung des Lichtes und der Wärme auf Schwärmsporen’ (The effect of light and heat on swarm spores; Strasburger 1878a) is in the Darwin Pamphlet Collection–CUL.
2
Strasburger had studied how changes in light intensity and temperature affected heliotropism in algal swarm spores (zoospores; see Strasburger 1878a, pp. 566–602). The species of algae studied by Strasburger were all classified within the kingdom Plantae (plants); one species (Botrydium granulatum) is now placed within the kingdom Chromista (brown, yellow-green, and golden-brown algae, and dinoflagellates).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-11714F,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-11714F