To Daniel Oliver   20 October [1860]

15 Marine Parade | Eastbourne

Oct. 20th

My dear Sir

We return to “Down Bromley Kent” on 26th. —1

I have heard from Huxley about the Nat. Hist. Review2 & it has my good wishes & I shall certainly take it in.—   I really know nothing whatever about vegetable irritability (it is quite beyond my scope) except in case of Orchids; I have a large mass of notes with many new facts, but I resolutely, against my inclination, put them away a month ago with the determination to work them up & get drawings made at some distant period;3 for I am convinced that I ought to work on Variation & not amuse myself with interludes.— Drosera was an accident owing to my being from home & having nothing to do.—   My paper on Drosera, from containing minute particulars of numerous experiments, would not, I think, be fitted for the Review; & if I do not deceive myself some of the results are sufficiently curious to be published in some old standing Transactions. Where I shall send them I know not yet; as I cannot judge of evidence till all my experiments are tabulated & that will be a long job.—4 I may add that I told Huxley some months ago that I really could not assist by writing; I may add that my health is so weak that I cannot work above 3 hour a day; & I am at all times a most slow worker.—

I am so much obliged to you for going to try C. of Ammonia on Dionæa.5 I shd expect (but expectations are oftener wrong than right) that of C. of Ammonia on disc of leaf would cause it to shut slowly; but would produce no effect on back of leaf or on marginal spikes.—   What it will do on the sensitive lamina, Heaven only knows.—   I shd. expect after leaf has closed that each of the little tortoise-shell glands on the disc of leaf would secrete a minute bead of liquor. I must have expressed myself badly,—it is the red fluid being broken up or segregated with-in the sensitive lamina of a closed leaf, as in Drosera, which seems to me the important point of accordance; & not so much the action of C. of Ammonia on the red-fluid in the sensitive Hairs & tortoise-shell-like glands.—   I will try, & shd. not be in the least surprised, at C. of Ammonia acting on the fluid in cells of common leaves.—

My dear Sir | With many thanks | Yours very sincerely | C. Darwin

1
The Darwins in fact did not return home until 10 November 1860 (‘Journal’; Appendix II). See letter to Daniel Oliver, 23 [October 1860].
2
Thomas Henry Huxley and John Lubbock were planning to take over the editing, in conjunction with several other naturalists, of the Natural History Review, a scientific quarterly until then published by naturalists in Dublin. Oliver was also one of the new editors. See letters to T. H. Huxley, 20 July [1860], and to John Lubbock, 20 July [1860].
3
Orchids was published in 1862.
4
CD eventually published his work on Drosera and other insectivorous plants in Insectivorous plants, which appeared in 1875.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

2.14 writing; I may add] ‘I’ below del ‘you’; ‘may add’ above del ‘must know’
3.2 on disc of leaf 3.3] after del ‘would’
3.6 of leaf] interl
3.7 with-in] ‘with-’ added
3.8 Drosera,] comma over semicolon

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-2956,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-2956