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spontaneous circulatory movement of the upper internodes.* Pray tell me whether anything has been published on this subject? I hate publishing what is old; but I shall hardly regret my work if it is old, as it has much amused me. . . .

He soon found that his observations were not entirely novel, and wrote to Hooker: "I have now read two German books, and all I believe that has been written on climbers, and it has stirred me up to find that I have a good deal of new matter. It is strange, but I really think no one has explained simple twining plants. These books have stirred me up, and made me wish for plants specified in them."

He continued his observations on climbing plants during the prolonged illness from which he suffered in the autumn of 1863, and in the following spring. He wrote to Sir J. D. Hooker, apparently in March 1864:

The hot-house is such an amusement to me, and my amusement I owe to you, as my delight is to look at the many odd leaves and plants from Kew. . . . The only approach to work which I can do is to look at tendrils and climbers, this does not distress my weakened brain. Ask Oliver to look over the enclosed queries (and do you look) and amuse a broken-down brother naturalist by answering any which he can. If you ever lounge through your houses, remember me and climbing plants."

A letter to Dr. Gray, April 9, 1865, has a word or two on the subject.

"I have began correcting proofs of my paper on Climbing Plants. I suppose I shall be able to send you a copy in four or five weeks. I think it contains a good deal new, and some curious points, but it is so fearfully long, that no one will ever read it. If, however, you do not skim through it, you will be an unnatural parent, for it is your child."

Dr. Gray not only read it but approved of it, to my father's great satisfaction, as the following extracts show:

"I was much pleased to get your letter of July 24th. Now that I can do nothing, I maunder over old subjects, and your approbation of my climbing paper gives me very great satisfaction. I made my observations when I could do nothing else and much enjoyed it, but always doubted whether they were worth publishing.

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"I received yesterday your article† on climbers, and it has This view is rejected by some botanists.

In the September number of Silliman's Journal, concluded in the January number, 1866.

pleased me in an extraordinary and even silly manuer. You pay me a superb compliment, and as I have just said to my wife, I think my friends must perceive that I like praise, they give me such hearty doses. I always admire your skill in reviews or abstracts, and you have done this article excellently and given the whole essence of my paper. I have had a letter from a good zoologist in S. Brazil, F. Müller, who has been stirred up to observe climbers, and gives me some curious cases of branch-climbers, in which branches are converted into tendrils, and then continue to grow and throw out leaves and new branches, and then lose their tendril character."

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The paper on Climbing Plants was republished in 1875, as a separate book. The author had been unable to give his customary amount of care to the style of the original essay, owing to the fact that it was written during a period of continued illhealth, and it was now found to require a great deal of alteration. He wrote to Sir J. D. Hooker (March 3, 1875): “It is lucky for anthors in general that they do not require such dreadful work in merely licking what they write into shape." And to Mr. Murray, in September, he wrote: "The corrections are heavy in Climbing Plants, and yet I deliberately went over the MS. and old sheets three times. The book was published in September 1875, an edition of 1500 copies was struck off; the edition sold fairly well, and 500 additional copies were printed in June of the following year.

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The Power of Movement in Plants. 1880.

The few sentences in the autobiographical chapter give with sufficient clearness the connection between the Power of Movement and the book on Climbing Plants. The central idea of the book is that the movements of plants in relation to light, gravitation, &c., are modifications of a spontaneous tendency to revolve or circumnutate, which is widely inherent in the growing parts of plants. This conception has not been generally adopted, and has not taken a place among the canons of orthodox physiology. The book has been treated by Professor Sachs with a few words of professorial contempt; and by Professor Wiesner it has been honoured by careful and generously expressed criticism.

Mr. Thiselton Dyer has well said; "Whether this masterly

Charles Darwin, Nature Series, p. 41.

conception of the unity of what has hitherto seemed a chaos of unrelated phenomena will be sustained, time alone will show. But no one can doubt the importance of what Mr. Darwin has done, in showing that for the future the phenomena of plant movement can and indeed must be studied from a single point of view."

The work was begun in the summer of 1877, after the publication of Different Forms of Flowers, and by the autumn his enthusiasm for the subject was thoroughly established, and he wrote to Mr Dyer: "I am all on fire at the work." At this time he was studying the movements of cotyledons, in which the sleep of plants is to be observed in its simplest form; in the following spring he was trying to discover what useful purpose these sleep-movements could serve, and wrote to Sir Joseph Hooker (March 25th, 1878):

"I think we have proved that the sleep of plants to is lessen the injury to the leaves from radiation. This has interested me much, and has cost us great labour, as it has been a problem since the time of Linnæus. But we have killed or badly injured a multitude of plants. N.B.-Oxalis carnosa was most valuable, but last night was killed."

The book was published on November 6, 1880, and 1500 copies were disposed of at Mr. Murray's sale With regard to it he wrote to Sir J. D. Hooker (November 23):

:

"Your note has pleased me much-for I did not expect that you would have had time to read any of it. Read the last chapter, and you will know the whole result, but without the evidence. The case, however, of radicles bending after exposure for an hour to geotropism, with their tips (or brains) cut off is, I think worth your reading (bottom of p. 525); it astounded me. But I will bother you no more about my book. The sensitiveness of seedlings to light is marvellous."

To another friend, Mr. Thiselton Dyer, he wrote (November 28, 1880):

"Very many thanks for your most kind note, but you think too highly of our work, not but what this is very pleasant. . . . Many of the Germans are very contemptuous about making out the use of organs; but they may sneer the souls out of their bodies, and I for one shall think it the most interesting part of Natural History. Indeed you are greatly mistaken if you doubt for one moment on the very great value of your constant and most kind assistance to us."

The book was widely reviewed, and excited much interest among the general public. The following letter refers to a leading article in the Times, November 20, 1880:

C. D. to Mrs. Haliburton.*

Down, November 22, 1880.

MY DEAR SARAH,-You see how audaciously I begin; but I have always loved and shall ever love this name. Your letter has done more than please me, for its kindness has touched my heart. I often think of old days and of the delight of my visits to Woodhouse, and of the deep debt of gratitude which I owe to your father. It was very good of you to write. I had quite forgotten my old ambition about the Shrewsbury newspaper; but I remember the pride which I felt when I saw in a book about beetles the impressive words "captured by C. Darwin." Captured sounded so grand compared with caught. This seemed to me glory enough for any man! I do not know in the least what made the Times glorify me, for it has sometimes pitched into me ferociously.

I should very much like to see you again, but you would find a visit here very dull, for we feel very old and have no amusement, and lead a solitary life. But we intend in a few weeks to spend a few days in London, and then if you have anything else to do in London, you would perhaps come and lunch with us.

Believe me, my dear Sarah,

Yours gratefully and affectionately.

The following letter was called forth by the publication of a volume devoted to the criticism of the Power of Movement in Plants by an accomplished botanist, Dr. Julius Wiesner, Professor of Botany in the University of Vienna:

C. D. to Julius Wiesner. Down, October 25th, 1881.

MY DEAR SIR,-I have now finished your book, and have understood the whole except a very few passages. In the first place, let me thank you cordially for the manner in which you have everywhere treated me. You have shown how a man may differ from another in the most decided manner, and yet express his difference with the most perfect courtesy. Not a

Mrs. Haliburton was a daughter of my father's early friend, the late Mr. Owen, of Woodhouse.

+ Mrs. Haliburton had reminded him of his saying as a boy that if Eddowes' newspaper ever alluded to him as "our deserving fellowtowusman," his ambition would be amply gratified.

Das Bewegungsvermögen der Pflanzen. Vienna, 1881.

few English and German naturalists might learn a useful lesson from your example; for the coarse language often used by scientific men towards each other does no good, and only degrades science.

I have been profoundly interested by your book, and some of your experiments are so beautiful, that I actually felt pleasure while being vivisected. It would take up too much space to discuss all the important topics in your book. I fear that you have quite upset the interpretation which I have given of the effects of cutting off the tips of horizontally extended roots, and of those laterally exposed to moisture; but I cannot persuade myself that the horizontal position of lateral branches and roots is due simply to their lessened power of growth. Nor when I think of my experiments with the cotyledons of Phalaris, can I give up the belief of the transmission of some stimulus due to light from the upper to the lower part. At p. 60 you have misunderstood my meaning, when you say that I believe that the effects from light are transmitted to a part which is not itself heliotropic. I never considered whether or not the short part beneath the ground was heliotropic; but I believe that with young seedlings the part which bends near, but above the ground is heliotropic, and I believe so from this part bending only moderately when the light is oblique, and bending rectangularly when the light is horizontal. Nevertheless the bending of this lower part, as I conclude from my experiments with opaque caps, is influenced by the action of light on the upper part. My opinion, however, on the above and many other points, signifies very little, for I have no doubt that your book will convince most botanists that I am wrong in all the points on which we differ.

Independently of the question of transmission, my mind is so full of facts leading me to believe that light, gravity, &c., act not in a direct manner on growth, but as stimuli, that I am quite unable to modify my judgment on this head. I could not understand the passage at p. 78, until I consulted my son George, who is a mathematician. He supposes that your objection is founded on the diffused light from the lamp illuminating both sides of the object, and not being reduced, with increasing distance in the same ratio as the direct light; but he doubts whether this necessary correction will account for the very little difference in the heliotropic curvature of the plants in the successive pots.

With respect to the sensitiveness of the tips of roots to contact, I cannot admit your view until it is proved that I am in error about bits of card attached by liquid gum causing

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