My dear Mr. Darwin,

Your letter arrived just in time to prevent my sending an order to my bookseller for ‘Insectivorous Plants,’ for, of course, it is needless to say that I shall highly value a copy from yourself.¹ At first I intended to wait until I should have more time to enjoy the work, but a passage in this week’s ‘Nature’ determined me to get a copy at once. This passage was one about reflex action,² and I am very anxious to see what you say about this, because in a paper I have prepared for the ‘B.A.’ on Medusæ I have had occasion to insist upon the occurrence of reflex action in the case of these, notwithstanding the absence of any distinguishable system of afferent and efferent nerves.³ But as physiologists have been so long accustomed to associate the phenomena of reflex action with some such distinguishable system, I was afraid that they might think me rather audacious in propounding the doctrine, that there is such a thing as reflex action without well-defined structural channels for it to occur in.⁴ But if you have found something of the same sort in plants, of course I shall be very glad to have your authority to quote. And I think it follows deductively from the general theory of evolution, that reflex action ought to be present before the lines in which it flows are sufficiently differentiated to become distinguishable as nerves.

I am very glad that you are pleased with my progress so far.