Ɛpsilon

To W. C. Marshall   7 September [1874]1

Down, | Beckenham, Kent.

Sept 7th

My dear Mr Marshall

I am very grateful to you. Your observations are excellent, & are put most clearly & will be very useful to me.2

I have picked off 16 seeds from this lot! The plant is certainly to a certain extent graninivorous also somewhat graminivorous, though mainly insectivorous.3 The rain, I know washes off the secretion & with it captured insects (& as you say seeds), which are retained by the incurved edges, which then become more incurved. It is a pretty experiment to put a row of flies or cabbage seeds on one margin of a flat leaf & see how the edge of the side curls over in from 12 to 24 hours.

With cordial thanks | Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin—

1
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from W. C. Marshall, 5 September [1874] (Correspondence vol. 22).
2
Marshall had sent CD observations on Pinguicula and leaves of Pinguicula with seeds on (Correspondence vol. 22, letter from W. C. Marshall, 5 September [1874]).
3
Graminivorous: feeding on grass and cereals. Graninivorous: a made-up word presumably meaning feeding on seeds. For CD’s observations on the plants sent by Marshall, see Insectivorous plants, p. 370.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-9627F,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-9627F