From W. F. Stanley   15 December 1881

Dear Sir

I feel great pleasure in sending you a copy of my experimental work on Fluids which I will ask you kindly to accept.¹ I do not presume that the subject is one of general interest to you but there is one part that bears relation (I think) to animal life to which I wish to call your attention and if it is not asking too great a favour I should like your opinion of the possibilities of my speculations on this subject. The matter is contained in two propositions 106 and 107 pages 311 to 317   In this I show by a simple experiment that fine streams or small masses of liquids projected with constant force (as by gravity) and under equal but not great resistance within a plane—will constantly bifurcate and form veins down which the projection will continue   This matter will be best seen by reading the propositions pointed out. In writing the matter if I had not curbed my imagination I should have pressed the subject a little further to point out some instances in low types of life of the evidence of systematic bifurcation and radiation as in the Algæ but this would have carried me too far from the subject of my book— I suppose my propositions are very daring but in this possibly you may feel sympathy as you have offered perhaps the most daring propositions of any—of which now every sensible man admits the value— I feel in writing to you I may mention a little incident in my life— I had read a review that was not flattering of your Origin of Species in what journal I do not now remember.² But the very instances the reviewer gave for the purposes of condemnation struck me with the very opposite opinion to his own— And your Origin of Species was the first book on any special Science I remember buying—

Yours Faithfully | W^m. F Stanley

Chas Darwin Esq FRS &c