From Francis Darwin   [25 July 1881]¹

My dear Father,

I went on Sunday yesterday to Basel to see Vöchting² and a very pleasant visit indeed, he gave me a warm welcome, & shook hands at intervals of a few minutes, saying how glad he was I had come to see him. I had a great deal of interesting talk with him, one thing aggravates me a good deal. In my bramble paper I said that his exp on weeping trees were not a full proof against Sachs, because he (Sachs) might say that the shoot stuff was here geotrop instead of apogeotrop,³ but Vöchting showed me that his experiments were a full proof because ultimately the strongest branches grow out at the side like a just as they would if it had been an ordinary branch tied down. It was awfully stupid of me and aggravates me a good deal; I didn’t quite realise it when I was with him, not till I came back here & re-read his paper in the Bot Zeitung,⁴ so my aggravation didn’t come on in time to spoil my time with him; it is all the more aggravating as I needn’t have said it at all.

He began telling me that he had been experimenting on the position of the flowers in Narcissus; & found the same thing that I did namely that they straighten themselves instead of when grown on the Klinostat, & that they are dia-geotropic, he was very much astonished that I had been doing it, he has done a number of flowers in the same way & it will be published in his new book.⁵ I wish I had felt surer that it was worth going in more for; I shall perhaps repeat my experiments with Narcissus & publish them, & I shall go on with similar ones I began on the position of the anthers &c in Azalea⁶   He will make a splendid proof out of this that gravity acts as a stimulus   it is rather too complicated to explain   There is another coincidence, he said that he had made up his mind next summer to do my experiment with leaves in relation to light on the Klinostat, when he got my paper.⁷

He is a most pleasant man & was over flowing with hospitality   he took me to dine at the Hotel & to supper at a garden & wouldn’t hear of my paying for myself   He is not married so he doesn’t dine at home. He was very enthusiastic about the Power of Movements⁸ & thinks it will have a great effect

He was continually saying But now tell me some more about your father & was extremely interested in anything I could tell him, about your hours of work &c. He told me a horrid piece of news about Sachs, he says he has heard it from two sources & has no doubt about it; that M^rs Sachs⁹ is so little if at all insane that her friends have taken her out of the private asylum with his permission, & now she lives at Bonn with her friends, & he has a mistress at Würzburg (but not in his house)   if it wasn’t that I want to see Kunkel at Wzbg I really dont think I should go.¹⁰ If I go I will certainly call on Semper.¹¹ I shall try & get home on Monday night the 1^st Aug & shall leave here either Wednesday or Thursday (27 or 28^th)

I had sent off my notice about the nectary paper before I got yr letter

I never thought abt what you say about it being a reason for protecting the honey, it is a very true & a neat reason—¹²

Yr affec F.D.