Ɛpsilon

To Francis Darwin   [16 June 1881]1

[Glenridding House, Patterdale.]

My dear F.

Some of these seeds wind up into spire very quickly after being dipped in water & some move very slowly.— I am surprised that they can bury themselves in the ground, They all seem a little bowed naturally, before being wetted.— I have thanked Payne.—2

George arrived last night in pretty good trim, but he looks very thin.— He has sent in his paper to R. Soc. which will, I think, interest geologists.3

I have read Wortmann’s article in Bot. Zeitung with much interest.4 He seems to have proved his case well. It is very odd that we could not see Cieselkys case of the roots, not entering water, though I tried them with all temperatures.5 We ought to have had more perseverance.—

yours affectionately | C. Darwin

The essay on Växtformations is on geographical distribution of Plants!!6

1
The date is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from George Payne, 14 June 1881, and by the date of George Howard Darwin’s arrival at Patterdale (see nn. 2 and 3, below).
2
See letter from George Payne, 14 June 1881 and n. 1. Payne had sent seeds of Anemone pulsatilla (pasque flower). CD’s reply to Payne has not been found.
3
According to Emma Darwin’s diary (DAR 242), George arrived at the Darwin holiday home at Patterdale in the Lake District on 15 June 1881. George’s paper, ‘On the stresses caused in the interior of the earth by the weight of continents and mountains’, was received at the Royal Society of London on 11 June 1881 (G. H. Darwin 1881b).
4
Julius Wortmann’s paper, ‘Ein Beitrag zur Biologie der Mucorineen’ (A contribution on the biology of Mucorales; Wortmann 1881), appeared in parts in Botanische Zeitung, 10 and 17 June 1881. CD had evidently read the first part, in which Wortmann described experiments with Phycomyces nitens that demonstrated the movement of sporophores away from moisture.
5
In Wortmann 1881, pp. 373–4, Wortmann had cited Theophil Ciesielski’s paper on roots bending away from water (Ciesielski 1872).
6
See letter to Francis Darwin, 27 May 1881 and n. 4. CD had mistakenly thought that Ragnar Hult’s essay ‘Försök bis analytisk behandling af växtformationerna’ (Attempt at an analytical approach to plant formations; Hult 1881) was about bloom. George, who understood Swedish, had evidently translated the title for CD.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.2 in the ground, 1.3] interl

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13206,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13206