Ɛpsilon

From M. T. Masters   25 November 1880

The Gardeners’ Chronicle Office, | 41 Wellington Street, Strand, W.C. | London

Nov. 25 1880

My dear Sir/

I have just been glancing over your book on Plant Movements as a preliminary to a more careful & leisurely survey when opportunity offers— I cannot refrain from expressing my admiration of your labors and my great interest in what you say about Root movements— I see you quote Chatin as to the movement of the leaves of Conifers— I have paid a good deal of attention lately to this in several species including some under my own windows & I cannot help thinking Chatin has made a mistake— I always find the white surface exposed in the day time1

I send you an extract from the Linnean Journal wherein the subject is alluded to but since it was published I have seen the movements in numerous other species but always in the day time.2

I have alluded to the matter in this week’s G. C.3

faithfully yrs. | Maxwell T. Masters

C Darwin Esq

1
Masters’s name is not on the presentation list for Movement in plants (see Appendix IV) but CD had asked for Gardeners’ Chronicle to be sent a review copy; see letter to R. F. Cooke, 20 October 1880. In Movement in plants, p. 389, CD quoted a note by Joannes Chatin in Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l’Académie des sciences 82 (1876): 171–2 on the leaves of Pinus nordmanniana (a synonym of Abies nordmanniana subsp. nordmanniana) rising up at night to reveal the white under surface of the leaves.
2
Masters sent his paper ‘Relations between morphology and physiology in the leaves of certain conifers’ from the Journal of the Linnean Society, Botany (Masters 1879). On p. 550, Masters observed that the white hue of Abies nordmanniana was more conspicuous when the branches were exposed to the full rays of the sun.
3
See Gardeners’ Chronicle, 27 November 1880, pp. 692–4.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-12858,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-12858