Ɛpsilon

From Francis Darwin   17 June 1881

Strassburg

17th June 81

My dear Father

Many thanks for yr letter   I am awfully glad you approve of the Diaheliotropic paper.1 I have written for extra copies— I have been working pretty hard— I had a good go at the developement of Carex embryo in reference to the architecture of the very young root.2 It is awfully difficult as the little beasts must be free of the endosperm so that you can roll them over & see both sides; the rolling is done very cutely by putting a very fine spun glass filament under the cover glass; then they are always getting lost; it is good practice for accurate focussing as you have to avoid the upper & lower surfaces & look at the middle set of cells— I have also been doing Yucca root which turns out to be interesting because it isnt of the true Monocotyledon type.3 Since then I have been doing cambium in various plants— De Bary is simply splendid in the way he helps one; it makes one envy the men who work 4 or 5 years under him4

The Swedish Växt book is nothing to do with wax, it = “Gewächse” & is about Plant-forms   a sort of “Grisebach en miniature” as de Bary says5

I heard from Schmiedeberg the Prof of Pharmacology that Hensen’s book is very good but otherwise I couldn’t hear much of him; there will be a full notice of it by Strassburger in the Bot Zeitung.6

I am going tonight with de B to the Naturfor: Gesell to hear the Petrolog Professor talk chiefly about old Hahn & his Hahnia meteorica & I must go this minute7

I heard some excellent music lastnight by 3 students P.F. V & Vo 3o of Schubert extremely well played by all; it is a small Musical & Literary Soc & the men seem very pleasant.8 Neitzel also played a Beet Sonata 106 very well, & gave a little lecture on the meaning of it it being the life of a hero9

Yours affec | F. D.

I got a very nice letter from old Wm which I will answer very soon10

I am very glad about G. & Ball—11

Isnt the review in Nature on the Salt Book rather Romanesque; it amused me12

1
The letter has not been found; CD’s letter of [16 June 1881] must have crossed in the mail with this letter. Francis’s paper ‘On the power possessed by leaves of placing themselves at right angles to the direction of incident light’ (F. Darwin 1880a) had recently been published in the Journal of the Linnean Society (Botany). CD had defined diaheliotropism as the taking of a position more or less transverse to the light and induced by it (Movement in plants, p. 5).
2
Carex is the genus of true sedges in the family Cyperaceae; some sedges develop distinct dauciform (carrot-like) roots, which are short with dense root hairs, as a response to nutrient deficiency.
3
The roots of most monocotyledons are composed of a fibrous network, known as adventitious roots, that arise from the stem. Plants of the genus Yucca have long fleshy taproots (typical of dicotyledons) as well as a shallow radial root system.
4
Francis was working for the summer in the laboratory of Anton de Bary in Straßburg (Strasbourg). De Bary was known for his close supervision of practical work with his students and his accessibility (see, for example Bower 1938, pp. 17, 24–6).
5
See letter to Francis Darwin, [16 June 1881] and n. 6; the work was ‘Försök bis analytisk behandling af växtformationerna’ (Attempt at an analytical approach to plant formations; Hult 1881). The German ‘Gewächs’ and Swedish ‘växt’ are cognates; they derive from the verb ‘wachsen’ (växa): to grow. CD associated ‘väx’ with English ‘wax‘ and initially thought the title might refer to bloom, the waxy coating on some leaves and fruit. August Heinrich Rudolf Grisebach had been a professor of botany at Göttingen and travelled widely studying plant geography (NDB).
6
Oswald Schmiedeberg commented on Victor Hensen’s recent work, Physiologie der Zeugung (Physiology of reproduction; Hensen 1881). See letter to Francis Darwin, 27 May 1881. It was Adolf Engler, rather than Eduard Strasburger, who reviewed Hensen 1881 in Botanische Zeitung, 17 June 1881 (Engler 1881).
7
Otto Hahn had sent CD a copy of his work Die Meteorite (Chondrite) und ihre Organismen (Meteorites (chondrites) and their organisms; Hahn 1880) in December 1880 (see Correspondence vol. 28, letter from Otto Hahn, 16 December 1880). Hahn sent his collection to David Friedrich Weinland, who named one of the coral-like forms Hahnia meteorica (Burke 1986, p. 172). Emil Cohen was professor extraordinarius of petrography at Straßburg.
8
Franz Schubert wrote two piano trios for piano (pianoforte), violin, and cello (violoncello) (D. 898 and D. 929).
9
Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Sonata no. 29, op. 106, was played by Otto Neitzel, a former director of the Musikverein (music society) in Straßburg and the music director of the Straßburger Stadttheater.
10
The letter from William Erasmus Darwin has not been found.
12
The history of salt (Boddy 1881) was anonymously reviewed in Nature, 9 June 1881, pp. 123–4. The reviewer supposed that the book was written as ‘an elaborate joke’ and the tone of the review is very tongue-in-cheek. ‘Romanesque’: Francis implies that the anonymous reviewer might have been George John Romanes.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13208F,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13208F