My dear Hooker

We are staying for a week with Horace here in Cambridge, as I much wanted a change & rest.¹ Now I am going to bother you or Dyer, if the latter has returned. I sadly want the plants in enclosed list.² I tried to get a Papaw but failed from Veitch, where I got Nepenthes Dionæa & some other plants.³ I am investigating the action of Carbonate of Ammonia, on chlorophyll, which makes me want the plants in my list.⁴ I have incidentally, observed one point in Euphorbia, which has astonished me, viz that in the fine fibrous roots of Euphorbia, the alternate rows of cells in these roots must differ physiologically, though not in external appearance, as their contents after the action of Carbonate of Ammonia differ most conspicuously.⁵

(Now for another subject: D^r. King writes that he has dispatched a very fine specimen of Dischidia Rafflesiana in spirits to me, & he sends a drawing & extract from Wallich.— What an extraordinary case it seems to be: from what D^r. King says & the drawings it looks as if the plant manufactured little pitchers of manure-water, so that its roots might be nourished by the contents.—⁶ Now I have not, of course, histological knowledge enough to undertake the examination of the minute structure of these pitchers, & do you know of any one with knowledge enough who w^d like to undertake the work: always supposing that the work has not already been done. If no one else w^d do so, perhaps Frank would; but he likes physiological work, more than morphological work.—⁷

Please observe that we return home on Thursday 27^th, so that if you can send me any plants, they ought not to be despatched before that day.— Ever my dear Hooker | Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin

P.S. | Wiesner of Vienna has just published a book, vivisecting me in the most courteous, but awful manner, about the “Power of Movement in Plants”.—⁸ Thank Heaven he admits almost all my facts, after retrying all my experiments; but gives widely different interpretations of the facts.— I think he proves me wrong in several cases, but I am convinced that he is utterly erroneous & fanciful in other explanations. No man was ever vivisected in so sweet a manner before, as I am in this book.—

Pray give my kind farewell to Asa Gray & I thank him for the card received just as we were leaving home.—⁹