WCP3942

[1]

Broadstone, Wimborne

Nov[embe]^r. 21st. 1907

Lt. Col. D. Prain¹

Dear Sir

I venture to request you to give me information on a point as to which you are likely to be better acquainted than any one I know.

Among D^r. R. Spruce²'s papers, I find a Mss. which was read at the Linnean Society's meeting of April 15-1869— but not printed. It was on "An Agency in Plant Structure"— and contains a series of very interesting observations on such structures as he met with. He came to the conclusion that [2] some of these structures— sacs, tumours, &c. on leaves petioles, stems, &c.— were now hereditary in the plant, either wholly or partially, while others were did not appear unless through the recurrent agency of the ants. He found them most frequent on 4 genera of Melastomacea³— 2 of Rubracea on several Liguminosde— and a few other orders.

It was his firm belief (& perhaps his positive statement) that in some cases these were [3] inherited— and which statements he refused to modify— that led to the return of the paper. Considering that at that pre-Weismannian epoch almost all biologists accepted the inheritance of acquired characters, the rejection of a paper on this groun seems to me very curious.

What I wish particularly to know is— whether, either at Kew or any of our Tropical Botanic Gardens the question of the hereditary transmission of such structures has in any case been proved by experiment [4] either in the case of the genus Tococa, or other S. American genera, or in those of the East. I see in the "Dictionary of Gardening" Tococa guianensis is described as having an "inflated bladder" at the base of the leaf, and the genus as "often having on the base of the petiole a two-lobed inflated bladder". This would imply that the character occurs in cultivated plants independent of ant-agency. Can you inform me if that is the case.

Yours very truly | Alfred R. Wallace [signature]

⁴can't say "inherited"

Myrmecodia