My Dear Sir,—

Though there may not be much that is new to you in D^r. Wood’s Lecture on Insectivorous plants, I am sure you will like to see it, and I have begged a copy for you which I send by mail with this today.²

I took occasion to note recently that plants did not always behave in one place as they do in others,—and I incidentally referred to your experience with Linum perenne, to illustrate my point.³ I did this by no means to antagonize your observations, but quite on the contrary, to help strengthen them with those who might see cases like mine, and suspect there might be some error in the original observation. I endeavored to show a good reason for seemingly differing experiences. My friend D^r. Gray seems to take it another way, and writes to me that I might at least have waited to see whether or not the plant in America is heterostyled before making the remark,—that perhaps the L. Lewisii is not after all L. sibirica or L. perenne, but entitled to distinctive rank.⁴ So far there is a good point in the suggestion that we should go over again and examine the matter, and I am sure I shall look into it with much pleasure. But as we had all of us come to the conclusion that they were identical, the doubt did not occur to me,— so that while I am glad of the suggestion to examine our form again, I think I may be pardoned for having referred to it as I did.

Though I cannot quite see just as you do, as to the deductions to be drawn from some of the observations,—I am so much in accord with so many of your views, and am so much indebted indeed to all of your labors, that I should be annoyed to be thought an “antagonist”.

With best respects and wishes, believe me dear Sir | Very truly Yours | Thomas Meehan